What good alignment is Thor? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Doug Lampert

2019-05-23, 01:46 PM

Which fits with Durkon's alignment. I think I recall reading that clerics need to be within one step of the deity's alignment. So LG Durkon can worship NG Thor...

That's the default, but there are plenty of exceptions. As I point out when this comes up, Forgotten Realms has a NG goddess with CG, NG, LG, LN, and LE clerics. LE is 3 steps away from NG, but they're allowed (special circumstances, but it still must make for interesting casual conversation at the temple get-together when the CG and LE cleric of the same deity are discussing morality and society).

St. Cuthbert is an exception in the 3.5 PHB, and IIRC also from the 3.0 PHB, so there have been exceptions for as long as third edition has existed and it isn't just a Forgotten Realms thing.

Now, is there any POSSIBLE reason why Thor MIGHT, just MIGHT, allow LG dwarfs to be his clerics in this particular setting?

Seriously, arguing against CG based on the one-step rule is not a good argument.

Wizard_Lizard

2019-05-23, 02:04 PM

And 5e is relevant to OOTS ... how exactly?

because I know nothing about anything earlier than that, and there may be consistency beyween editions.

Peelee

2019-05-23, 02:06 PM

It's more a hypothesis than a doctrine, honestly.

Grey Wolf

Are you saying my Grey Wolf Doctorate is just conjecture?!?

Wizard_Lizard

2019-05-23, 02:15 PM

I have nothing to contribute at the moment, I just wanted you to know I love this line.
me too........

D.One

2019-05-23, 02:49 PM

...and there may be consistency beyween editions.

I tell him, or any of you tell him? :smallbiggrin:

Fyraltari

2019-05-23, 02:56 PM

Are you saying my Grey Wolf Doctorate is just conjecture?!?

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/854981439931291451/E8842E15A803ACAE910D515176449B4503022FA8/?imw=1024&imh=576&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true

paladinofshojo

2019-05-23, 03:39 PM

That's not Lawful Good, that's just Good. It was the easiest way to get them to avoid defaulting to Hel.

So building and guiding the dwarven race into the staunch traditionalists to the point where they’re all basically homogenous isn’t considered Lawful?

Peelee

2019-05-23, 03:47 PM

So building and guiding the dwarven race into the staunch traditionalists to the point where they’re all basically homogenous isn’t considered Lawful?

Thor: Hey guys there's this bet, if you don't die honorably you go to Hel.

Dwarven race: We think best way to ensure our salvation is to build our society in this specific way. Praise Thor for helping us out!

Thor: Cool, peace out!
Tl;Dr - yes, that is correct.:smalltongue:

D.One

2019-05-23, 03:59 PM

So building and guiding the dwarven race into the staunch traditionalists to the point where they’re all basically homogenous isn’t considered Lawful?

Well, we don't know how much of Dwarven Society was directly guided by Thor and how much was dwarven interpretation of what Thor said. What we know for sure is that:

1) Thor told them that dying with honor prevented going to Hel

and

2) The dwarfs created an entire dogma of hatred against trees because some day Thor decided to zap a pine or two

Jasdoif

2019-05-23, 08:59 PM

My theory is still:

For optimal drama (because it makes little difference otherwise), I like to think Thor is CG by nature, but has made a conscious effort to be more Lawful so he can grant clerical powers to LG dwarven worshippers...either because he feels responsible for the dwarves' afterlife conditions, or because he really wants to win that bet.

He's not very good at it, though, and it takes most of his focus just to make the little headway into NG he has...which is why a great deal of his observed behavior is chaotic, why he frequently appears clueless distracted, and why he has (Lawful) devas on his staff.

Wizard_Lizard

2019-05-24, 12:20 AM

My theory is still:

that makes sense

Morgana

2019-05-24, 07:20 PM

I remember there being gods in the books that have different pre-requisites for their followers, being exceptions to the alignment rules. So Thor could very easily be a CG god that has the especial clause of accepting worship of LG clerics

martianmister

2019-05-26, 11:12 AM

He's Chaotic Good on the inside, but forcing himself to be lawful on the outside.

2D8HP

2019-05-26, 01:12 PM

the 5e PHB has himas CG I think.

And 5e is relevant to OOTS ... how exactly?

because I know nothing about anything earlier than that, and there may be consistency beyween editions.

I tell him, or any of you tell him? :smallbiggrin:

OotS is based (a little) on 3.5 rules

http://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/oots/images/7/76/OOTS0789.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20160830212209

and there have been changes between editions (for better AND FOR WORSE!

I am really, really impressed by your ability to turn everything into a "old D&D was better" statement. Here we have a thread about tolerance for racial fetishes, and somehow you still manage to make your point!

You're like this forums Cato the Elder.
...In the 1974 LBB's all classes had 1d6 hit points at first level.
With the '75 "alternative system" Fighting-men were raised to d8's (and Magic Users were dropped to d4's).
With the '78 AD&D PHB Fighters hit points were raised to d10's.
Now it's 10 plus or minus the CON modifier at first level!
When does hit point inflation stop!
Stand athwart the editions and say no more!....), but there's also been good, true, and beautiful GLORIOUS consistantcies such as Thor's Alignment which was "Chaotic Good" in both the 1980 Deities & Demi-Gods, as well as the 2002 one, and Thor is also "CG" in 2014 "5e" D&D (the big exception was in 1976's Gods, Demi-Gods because "Chaotic Good" wasn't an option in the original 1974 rules).

I've little doubt that Thor is "CG" in the Stickverse as well.

Carthago delenda est!

Jay R

2019-05-29, 08:53 PM

The alignment has been discussed more than once in the comic.

Thor is Lawful Stupid.

Cirin

2019-05-29, 09:03 PM

Most sources have him as CG, but that is other worlds' Thor. There are worlds where the "one step rule" is not in effect, and this could be the case here. His behaviour surely seems Chaotic, so I believe the most reasonable possibilities are:

1) CG, but accepts LG clerics (or LG dwarven clerics because of the bet)

2) NG, and thus accepts both CG or LG clerics.

Exactly, the "One Step" rule may not be in effect. There are definitely D&D worlds and settings where that rule is NOT in play and deities have more detailed lists of allowable alignments for their clergy.

The "One Step" rule is a general rule that was a baseline for 3.5 as a good quick way to determine what alignment a cleric could be, but it was hardly a hard and binding rule.

D&D lore in various settings and sourcebooks normally puts Thor at Chaotic Good, which he definitely could pass for in OotS. He can be serious if he needs to be (like with Durkon on the Astral Plane) or act Lawful if he must (like building an Honorable society for the good of the Dwarves), but that's because alignments aren't caricatures, and it's possible to be Chaotic Good and not every single thing you do be chaotic.

martianmister

2019-05-30, 01:41 AM

The alignment has been discussed more than once in the comic.

Thor is Lawful Stupid.

Even though he always tries to subvert them?

Wizard_Lizard

2019-05-30, 04:42 AM

Even though he always tries to subvert them?

Agreed. By the other persons logic, all gods are lawful stupid.

137beth

2019-06-04, 08:13 AM

KillianHawkeye

2019-06-29, 08:19 AM

He doesn’t seem to fit nicely into any of the three good alignments.

He seems to have some chaotic good moments-his belligerence during drinking as he knocked up a fertility goddess out of wedlock and shooting thunder at trees at a whim.

Lawful good moments- in that he forged the dwarves into the most honor bound and lawful society

And Neutral good- In that while he respects the laws, he is willing to bend them when it suits the greater good, such as allowing Minrah to go with him and Durkon to see the graveyard of worlds on a technicality.

D&D lore in various settings and sourcebooks normally puts Thor at Chaotic Good, which he definitely could pass for in OotS. He can be serious if he needs to be (like with Durkon on the Astral Plane) or act Lawful if he must (like building an Honorable society for the good of the Dwarves), but that's because alignments aren't caricatures, and it's possible to be Chaotic Good and not every single thing you do be chaotic.

But by this logic, it's also perfectly possible that Thor is Lawful Good. Because you can be Lawful and still be a drunkard. You can be Lawful and still get women pregnant (just ask Durkon :smallwink:). And you can even be Lawful and still bend the rules, especially when you're Lawful Good and it's for the greater Good.

Also, this:

Second, the Law/Chaos axis is vague and unclear on a good day.

Worldsong

2019-06-29, 09:59 AM

I don't think serious behaviour is automatically Lawful and absent-minded behaviour is automatically Chaotic either.

Whenever Thor follows a ruling he does so because there's a very good reason for doing so (which mostly come down to "We don't want another Snarl so us gods have to play nice") and the moment there's extenuating circumstances he does his best to find a way to go around the rules without outright breaking them, and to me it looks like the main reason he doesn't outright break them the moment they become inconvenient is, again, because the Snarl is really scary.

He doesn't appear to have any real respect for the rules, he follows them because he doesn't have much of a choice (unless you count risking unleashing/creating another Snarl as a choice). He doesn't show any desire for order and encourages people to just be themselves, and finds it downright uncomfortable to give Durkon an order even though he's aware that in their relationship he definitely has the authority to give Durkon orders even under uncomfortable circumstances.

Also he once threw down lightning bolts outside of his own jurisdiction even though the rules stated that wasn't kosher because he thought he could get away with it once.

For me he seems rather solidly Chaotic Good, although I think whether you see him as Chaotic Good or Neutral Good depends a lot on whether you believe that Chaotic folk have to be rebellious and contrarian or not.

FujinAkari

2019-06-29, 02:47 PM

Let's also not forget that the vast majority of times he was obviously chaotic was in stories being told about him and not in first-hand observation, and therefore are NOT reliable.

mjasghar

2019-06-29, 02:52 PM

The evidence does seem to point towards Thor being Chaotic Good and the alignment relationship of clerics and gods simply not applying for some reason.

We need to keep in mind two things, though. First, Durkon was written as a cleric of Thor in the earliest days of the comic, when he was unlikely to ever appear and play a role - he was just a well-known deity. Second, the Law/Chaos axis is vague and unclear on a good day.
Actually I think rich played it up to contrast the lawful pious cleric with a womanising chaotic deity

Wizard_Lizard

2019-06-29, 03:23 PM

Let's also not forget that the vast majority of times he was obviously chaotic was in stories being told about him and not in first-hand observation, and therefore are NOT reliable.

Didn't the giant say something about this?
I'm sure there was something that characters wouldn't lie to the audience unless it was plot relevant, because exposition.

Morty

2019-06-29, 03:25 PM

Actually I think rich played it up to contrast the lawful pious cleric with a womanising chaotic deity

Which was likewise before the comic had any kind of real plot and where Thor was just there for a gag or two.

Wizard_Lizard

2019-06-29, 03:28 PM

Which was likewise before the comic had any kind of real plot and where Thor was just there for a gag or two.

fair point....

MReav

2019-06-29, 03:36 PM

Chaotic Good, but he's like Sune from Forgotten Realms who despite being CG, she was able to field paladins, so Thor can field LG clerics under similar reasoning.

Wizard_Lizard

2019-06-29, 03:48 PM

Chaotic Good, but he's like Sune from Forgotten Realms who despite being CG, she was able to field paladins, so Thor can field LG clerics under similar reasoning.

true... He is being forced to be lawful in his actions, byt is still chaotic.

FujinAkari

2019-06-29, 04:06 PM

Didn't the giant say something about this?
I'm sure there was something that characters wouldn't lie to the audience unless it was plot relevant, because exposition.

I don't personally recall that, but I do specifically remember him stating that the things presented within the Crayons of Time segment were from Soon's point of view and not necessarily historically accurate. I feel like much of the Thor things, since they are explicitly being told to us as a myth / legend, should not be taken as verbatim evidence, or at the very least, taken with a grain of salt, especially since they don't seem to jive tonally with Thor's ACTUAL appearance, in the flesh.

FujinAkari

2019-06-29, 04:08 PM

true... He is being forced to be lawful in his actions, byt is still chaotic.

This is a stance I don't really understand. Thor isn't being forced to be lawful. Thor's a God. He can simply accept Lawful worshipers if he wants to. Its his call. ((That said, I still stand by the idea that he isn't as Chaotic as you think, but the whole "forced too be lawfuller" is an argument that seems to come from no where))

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-06-29, 04:13 PM

Let's also not forget that the vast majority of times he was obviously chaotic was in stories being told about him and not in first-hand observation, and therefore are NOT reliable.

No, the vast majority of times he's been obviously chaotic has been when we've been shown his actions, or we've heard his views on rules. Other than Durkon's WWTD scene, every other scene I can think of as evidence for his Chaotic nature has been Thor in person.

Grey Wolf

Rogar Demonblud

2019-06-29, 04:15 PM

A better example of the myths conflicting with reality would be Thor attacking all the trees. He doesn't. He throws lightning. Sometimes a tree gets hit.

Honest Tiefling

2019-06-29, 04:26 PM

I think he's chaotic good, for the reasons others have stated. In Eberron clerics have no alignment restriction. I think it is perfectly plausible that dwarven clerics of Thor can be lawful due to the bet, or just due to Thor's own preference.

I think this needs to be repeated, because the alignment of clerics versus the alignment of their gods depends not on the ruleset, but the setting. Forgotten Realms also does this, as MReav mentioned. So the existence of lawful dwarven clerics doesn't matter unless we have published rules from the setting itself indicating that it does.

That, and I personally believe that Thor allows lawful celestials/other gods to run the society itself to seduce more things or to attack more trees. Yeah, more dwarves incoming? Good warriors? Excellent, proceed as you were.

Worldsong

2019-06-29, 05:32 PM

This is a stance I don't really understand. Thor isn't being forced to be lawful. Thor's a God. He can simply accept Lawful worshipers if he wants to. Its his call. ((That said, I still stand by the idea that he isn't as Chaotic as you think, but the whole "forced too be lawfuller" is an argument that seems to come from no where))

The 'forced to be lawful' argument comes from two directions I believe. The first (and most prominent) direction is that since the Bet requires dwarves to die with honour to not go to Hel Thor has been put in a position where he can either promote honour and duty amongst the dwarven race or watch their souls go to Hel, which for a good person isn't a choice at all since Hel is a terrible place/person. On top of that the base rules of DnD state that a cleric can at most be one alignment step removed from the alignment of their deity (Lawful Evil deity can't have Lawful Good clerics, Chaotic Neutral deity can't have Lawful Neutral clerics, etc). Of course as has been pointed out by several people this doesn't necessarily make Thor himself lawful since a) only his followers have to die with honour, b) not all settings use that restriction for cleric alignments, and c) honour is often associated with lawfulness but chaotic people can still be honourable.

The second one is that Thor has been shown as being unwilling to break the rules that the gods have agreed upon amongst themselves, which would strike almost everyone as lawful behaviour. However it is then revealed that the reason why the gods are so unwilling to break the rules is because being too casual with them could result in the Snarl being released (if their careless attitude allowed for the wrong mortals to learn about the Snarl) or a new Snarl being formed (if they started fighting with each other because they're not respecting the rules meant to avoid conflict).

So in two aspects Thor is showing behaviour which could be described as lawful, but it's considered 'forced' because his main motivation is that the alternative to following the rules is terrible, terrible things (dwarves go to Hel, Snarl kills the gods). And if the reason you're following the rules is because there's a knife at your throat it renders your obedience void in regards to determining whether you're lawful or not.

His accepting lawful followers is just people being unsure whether the OotS-verse adheres to the 'Clerics must be of close alignment to their deity' rule or not.

Aquillion

2019-06-29, 07:21 PM

I feel like NG fits him fine. It doesn't require any twisting of the rules or anything like that, and it fits all his behaviors - being annoyed at inconvenient rules, especially ones that offend Good sensibilities, is totally NG behavior. You don't have to be Chaotic to express objections to specific bad rules - V, for example, spends plenty of time griping about dumb rules and dumb traditions without being Chaotic, and is totally willing to subvert the law when it's expedient to do so. Thor's exploiting a loophole to talk about the Snarl and calling it a dumb rule is hardly as severe as V disintegrating Kubota and then expressing contempt for what the Paladins will think of this, especially since Thor's behavior could be justified by his Good alignment.

(In fact, even someone Lawful can object to rules that they feel offend their personal code - eg. a LG Thor could still think the dwarven rules or the rules on the Snarl are stupid because they're the wrong rules. LG doesn't mean "blindly accepts all rules indiscriminately." That said, he seems closer to NG.)

If you compare him to the comics' indisputably Chaotic characters, he's way less Chaotic than most of them.

Morty

2019-06-29, 07:24 PM

The difference between Chaotic Good and Neutral Good is fuzzy at the best of times, so I guess nothing stops him from being the latter.

Enixon

2019-06-29, 09:16 PM

That's the default, but there are plenty of exceptions. As I point out when this comes up, Forgotten Realms has a NG goddess with CG, NG, LG, LN, and LE clerics.

I know it's not the point of this thread and all, but this got me curious, which goddess is being talked about here?

Kish

2019-06-29, 09:35 PM

Mystra. She's a former mortal who ascended to take over the role of Goddess of Magic--a Lawful Neutral portfolio. So she accepts clerics who fit her own alignment (LG, NG, CG) as well as any LN, TN, or LE clerics who value magic above anything else they might worship.

Honest Tiefling

2019-06-29, 09:47 PM

If you compare him to the comics' indisputably Chaotic characters, he's way less Chaotic than most of them.

A point could be made that when we've seen Thor really speak, it was near Durkon. Thor in that case didn't seem to be a complete idiot, and might have presented a more neutral facade to his dwarven followers. If he was chaotic, I could see him having disappointed his followers a few universes ago and realizing his mistake.

The difference between Chaotic Good and Neutral Good is fuzzy at the best of times, so I guess nothing stops him from being the latter.

And when you have both Loki and the Dark One, you might be a little discreet with your real alignment.

Through if followers can influence their god, (such as turning Odin into the Chaotic Stupid alignment) does this mean that the lawful behavior of the dwarves could turn a formerly Chaotic Good Thor into a Neutral Good Thor?

Rogar Demonblud

2019-06-29, 10:17 PM

We don't know exactly how that works. Did Odin go loopy last world, or did that only kick in with the rush of souls between worlds?

Honest Tiefling

2019-06-29, 10:42 PM

I have a feeling that dwarves have been lawful in a LOT of destroyed worlds.

Then again, crazy berserker dwarves quaffing beer is a thing, so maybe it balances out?

HorizonWalker

2019-06-30, 06:22 AM

Another possibility is that Thor wasn't primarily worshipped by dwarves up until this world, where he was suddenly faced with an awful ultimatum: "Every dwarf that dies dishonorably will be tormented forever in Helheim. What're you gonna do about it?" Before then, Thor, the chaotic god of storms, largely ignored the surly and lawful dwarves who lived underground and largely ignored the sky filled with his storms.

KillianHawkeye

2019-06-30, 07:14 AM

Through if followers can influence their god, (such as turning Odin into the Chaotic Stupid alignment) does this mean that the lawful behavior of the dwarves could turn a formerly Chaotic Good Thor into a Neutral Good Thor?

Another possibility is that Thor wasn't primarily worshipped by dwarves up until this world, where he was suddenly faced with an awful ultimatum: "Every dwarf that dies dishonorably will be tormented forever in Helheim. What're you gonna do about it?" Before then, Thor, the chaotic god of storms, largely ignored the surly and lawful dwarves who lived underground and largely ignored the sky filled with his storms.

Well, if the existence of Marvel Comics' Thor can cause his hair to turn blonde from its natural red because of belief, it's certainly possible that suddenly being in charge of a bunch of extra-Lawful dwarves has turned Thor Lawful in the time since the most recent world was created. And considering it's probably his first time being Lawful, that might explain why it still chafes his style somewhat.

woweedd

2019-06-30, 08:17 AM

Thor's hatred of the rules, yet willingness to follow them for the sake of not making a new Snarl, doesn't read NG to me: It reads CG, but with a sense of self-preservation.:smalltongue:

The Pilgrim

2019-06-30, 08:44 AM

I think that the point that makes Thor CG over NG is that he still allows individual dwarves the choice to die in combat and at what time.

While dwarven culture clearly taughts and advices dwarves to die in combat at some point, there is no formal legislation about it, and it's up to the dwarf to decide when and how, or even if, they pick their last fight. That increases the danger of dwarves dying "dishonorably" and going to Hel, not only dooming their own souls, but also strengthening an evil Goddess. Promoting personal freedom over the Greater Good pins Thor as CG.

If Thor were LG or NG, dying in combat would be mandatory in dwarven culture, rather than just advised. With strict rules about dwarves having to throw themselves on the swords (or branches) of their enemies as soon as they reach a certain age, probably just after they raise their children to mature age. Perhaps even with dwarven death-squads set up to hunt those dwarves who don't comply, forcing them to fight to the death (for their own Good, of course). A LG God would make those laws more strict and more extreme, while a NG would be more lenient (probably no death-squads) but still would not allow personal freedom to put souls into danger of going to fuel an Evil Goddess.

HorizonWalker

2019-06-30, 09:43 AM

woweedd

2019-06-30, 09:47 AM

If you impose a societal order in which the elderly are forced to die in combat, possibly by death squads, then you're Evil. Doesn't matter why you're doing it, that's an Evil thing to do and you're Evil for doing it. The Lawful Good option would more likely just be instituting a draft on old people, and letting nature take its course. And even then, that's a bit more Neutral than Good.
I mean...The social order wasn't really Thor's decision either way. "Honorable death" was in the term sof the bet. He just helped condition Dwarven society so that as many of them would fulfill conditions as possible.

paddyfool

2019-06-30, 10:08 AM

I mean...The social order wasn't really Thor's decision either way. "Honorable death" was in the term sof the bet. He just helped condition Dwarven society so that as many of them would fulfill conditions as possible.

You need to read HorizonWalker's comment in the context of The Pilgrim's previous comment. It's not that what Thor is doing is Evil; it's that The Pilgrim's idea of what a LG Thor would do would be Evil.

Now, of course, I'm left wondering how a death-by-combat draft could be instituted in as Good a way as possible...

HorizonWalker

2019-06-30, 10:17 AM

You need to read HorizonWalker's comment in the context of The Pilgrim's previous comment. It's not that what Thor is doing is Evil; it's that The Pilgrim's idea of what a LG Thor would do would be Evil.

Now, of course, I'm left wondering how a death-by-combat draft could be instituted in as Good a way as possible...

Well, according to The Giant, it's not necessarily "death by combat" that you need- it's death with honor. Solution: military also runs supply caravans through dangerous terrain, because 1) those supplies are necessary, and 2) that oughta kill a few of the old geezers.

woweedd

2019-06-30, 10:17 AM

You need to read HorizonWalker's comment in the context of The Pilgrim's previous comment. It's not that what Thor is doing is Evil; it's that The Pilgrim's idea of what a LG Thor would do would be Evil.

Now, of course, I'm left wondering how a death-by-combat draft could be instituted in as Good a way as possible...
Probably "if it's literally the only option to keep your soul from eternal torment in the shadowy domain of Hel".

The Pilgrim

2019-06-30, 10:29 AM

HorizonWalker

2019-06-30, 11:45 AM

This might be as a good moment as any to remember that in this comic we have a LG God voting Yes to pre-emptively killing everyone in the world on behalf of the safety of their souls. Not to mention a certain order of LG Paladins who were given a free ticket to exterminate sentient races for the Greater Good.

So I don't think I'm getting too far of what constitutes "LG Godly Behaviour" by suggesting that a LG God might force their followers into a deathfight if that were the only way to save their souls from falling into an Evil domain.

There is, I think, an appreciable difference between "Once every few thousand years, in an emergency, kill everyone so their souls can go to an afterlife, because the alternative is letting them be eaten by the Snarl and getting no afterlife at all" and "On a daily basis, have death squads hunt down the elderly so they die in battle and go to the correct afterlife."

Morty

2019-06-30, 11:47 AM

I think a question we ought to ask is: how does our understanding of Thor and his relationship to Durkon change if we decide he's Neutral Good rather than Chaotic Good?

Fyraltari

2019-06-30, 12:18 PM

I think a question we ought to ask is: how does our understanding of Thor and his relationship to Durkon change if we decide he's Neutral Good rather than Chaotic Good?

There isn't a "we" to decided pretty much everyone ho cares makes their own guess. But discussing this gives people other interpretations of the alignment system so that can be worthwhile.

FujinAkari

2019-06-30, 01:04 PM

No, the vast majority of times he's been obviously chaotic has been when we've been shown his actions, or we've heard his views on rules. Other than Durkon's WWTD scene, every other scene I can think of as evidence for his Chaotic nature has been Thor in person.

Grey Wolf

I think you are misremembering a few :)

knocking up a fertility goddess while drunk (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0501.html) and striking down trees with lightning (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0150.html) are explicitly shown as Durkon telling stories of Thor, not as things Thor is directly doing (and the latter is explicitly refuted (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1136.html) by Thor himself.

The only one left that is chaotic is this one (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0201.html) which, if I wanted to be SUPER-PEDANTIC could be argued to not be chaotic at all, and the angels are simply mis-interpretting Thor as being more reckless, while he actually is just being goofy and fun while also being calculated.

However, I think it is more fair to say that Thor is Neutral Good who gets rumbustious when he gets drunk :P

hamishspence

2019-06-30, 01:54 PM

(the latter is explicitly refuted (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1136.html) by Thor himself.

Thor says in effect that he occasionally smites trees, but not because they're Evil, and that the Dwarves making a whole dogma out of it is their mistake.

The only one left that is chaotic is this one (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0201.html)

Another possible "Thor being Chaotic" scene is him breaking the standard rules for Control Weather:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0353.html

knocking up a fertility goddess while drunk (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0501.html) and striking down trees with lightning (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0150.html) are explicitly shown as Durkon telling stories of Thor, not as things Thor is directly doing

I think it's more a flashback than a story.

Just like Shojo and Miko here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0290.html

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-06-30, 02:02 PM

I think you are misremembering a few

No, it is you who seems to be misremembering Thor being dismissive of rules and grasping at any straw to break them given even half a reason to.

Grey Wolf

Rrmcklin

2019-06-30, 02:51 PM

Thor strikes me as being generally disdainful of rules but begrudgingly going along with them because he understands they're are (or at least some of them) are necessary.

I feel like his general demeanor leans more Chaotic, but if he were NG I wouldn't be particularly surprised by it.

The Pilgrim

2019-06-30, 02:54 PM

There is, I think, an appreciable difference between "Once every few thousand years, in an emergency, kill everyone so their souls can go to an afterlife, because the alternative is letting them be eaten by the Snarl and getting no afterlife at all" and "On a daily basis, have death squads hunt down the elderly so they die in battle and go to the correct afterlife."

No no no, you got it wrong. The role of the death squads would be not to hunt down all the elderly. Only those who break the Law. Regular elderly would follow law and tradition and get themselves killed properly without the need of intervention.

I mean, in #1166 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1166.html) we have that dwarf miner saying he was thinking about picking a fight with that old dwarf that just got swallowed, in order to allow him a proper death. So, if murdering your friends for their own good is kosher in dwarven society, it wouldn't be a big leap to have laws regulating it and public armed servants enforcing it.

Note that I'm not saying that this is how I think a LG God should behave. I'm just pointing out that such would be the behaviour expected, given how LG Gods have been shown to act in this comic (and many others, BTW).

Though, of course, a LG deity would have never got into that bet, to begin with.

FujinAkari

2019-06-30, 03:04 PM

Thor says in effect that he occasionally smites trees, but not because they're Evil, and that the Dwarves making a whole dogma out of it is their mistake.

Yeah, that's what I said. I'm just pointing out that Thor has directly supported the idea that Durkon's stories about him aren't necessarily reliable.
I think it's more a flashback than a story.A flashback to an event Durkon wasn't present at? :confused:

No, it is you who seems to be misremembering

Fine, I withdraw my theory, there is no reason to be rude. Geez

Fyraltari

2019-06-30, 04:59 PM

I mean, in #1166 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1166.html) we have that dwarf miner saying he was thinking about picking a fight with that old dwarf that just got swallowed, in order to allow him a proper death. So, if murdering your friends for their own good is kosher in dwarven society, it wouldn't be a big leap to have laws regulating it and public armed servants enforcing it.
I'm pretty sure the implication is meant to be that Kandro would willingly escalate the fight to a lethal one, not that Hoskin would bring an axe to a fist-fight. Also a society allowing the same for something is in no way equivalent to a society forcing it to everyone. I'd elaborate but every example I can think of are subjects to hot political debates in many place because humans are terrible sometimes and I don't want to get banned.

Note that I'm not saying that this is how I think a LG God should behave. I'm just pointing out that such would be the behaviour expected, given how LG Gods have been shown to act in this comic (and many others, BTW).
I don't remember any god being identified as LG. I don't recall any god being identified as any alignment except for Nergal's claim that death gods should be Neutral which means nothing.

Though, of course, a LG deity would have never got into that bet, to begin with.
Why, they don't get drunk?

Kish

2019-06-30, 06:36 PM

Why, they don't get drunk?
Logically, if you're continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos with quadrillions of lives depending on you, getting drunk shows something.

(I would say, either in the Wisdom area or--were I not the primary advocate of "we shouldn't apply true moral standards to OotS gods because they're all obvious scum by the standards applied to mortals like Roy"--in the Good/Evil alignment axis area.)

woweedd

2019-06-30, 08:44 PM

Logically, if you're continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos with quadrillions of lives depending on you, getting drunk shows something.

(I would say, either in the Wisdom area or--were I not the primary advocate of "we shouldn't apply true moral standards to OotS gods because they're all obvious scum by the standards applied to mortals like Roy"--in the Good/Evil alignment axis area.)

In fairness, if we’re to Thor’s drunkenness during the bet placement...Well, that would have happened fairly shortly after the death of whatever world preceded the OOTS one. Point being, after having millions of beings die, some of whom were probably literally calling your name as they did so...I don’t begrudge needing a drink after that.

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 02:46 AM

Logically, if you're continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos with quadrillions of lives depending on you, getting drunk shows something.
The LG gods are the ones who operate the universe? Doesn’t that give them a huge edge on the other gods? Or does it mean they don’t have time to mess with them?

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-01, 05:00 AM

Logically, if you're continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos with quadrillions of lives depending on you, getting drunk shows something.

But they are not continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos. In the interorbis periods, they sit around waiting for the Snarl to calm down and then they can get back to creating the jail. Being drunk when you have nothing else to do doesn't seem to be dereliction of duty.

Grey Wolf

Kish

2019-07-01, 07:29 AM

The LG gods are the ones who operate the universe? Doesn’t that give them a huge edge on the other gods? Or does it mean they don’t have time to mess with them?
Thor was observably able to catastrophically affect the afterlife structure of dwarves by saying "sure, whatever" to a bet when he was drunk. Whatever power any other god does or does not have, it remains that, from the perspective that mortals actually matter (this bit is to address Grey Wolf), yes, I have no trouble at all saying he shows horrifying irresponsibility getting drunk.

Which, again, leads to the conclusion that none of the gods really care about mortals except as chesspieces (Thor's handwringing about remembering all his worshipers aside) and thus they are all scum no matter what alignment is listed in their stat block.

(To be clear, "continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos" was a reference to the "do not operate heavy machinery while on this" disclaimer found on some medicines. The point is that he regularly gets out-of-control drunk while having the power to drastically affect lots of people's lives, not that actual gears are involved.)

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 07:44 AM

...This is uncharacteristically obtuse. Thor was observably able to catastrophically affect the afterlife structure of dwarves by saying "sure, whatever" to a bet when he was drunk. Whatever power any other god does or does not have, it remains that, from the perspective that mortals actually matter (this bit is to address Grey Wolf), yes, I have no trouble at all saying he shows horrifying irresponsibility getting drunk.

Which, again, leads to the conclusion that none of the gods really care about mortals except as chesspieces (Thor's handwringing about remembering all his worshipers aside) and thus they are all scum no matter what alignment is listed in their stat block.

(To be clear, "continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos" was a reference to the "do not operate heavy machinery while on this" disclaimer found on some medicines. The point is that he regularly gets out-of-control drunk while having the power to drastically affect lots of people's lives, not that actual gears are involved.)

When I ask why a LG god wouldn't do what Thor did, I expect the answer to be about the difference between LG, NG and CG gods, Kish. Don't call me obtuse for not divining that you were not answering the question you quoted.

woweedd

2019-07-01, 11:26 AM

Thor was observably able to catastrophically affect the afterlife structure of dwarves by saying "sure, whatever" to a bet when he was drunk. Whatever power any other god does or does not have, it remains that, from the perspective that mortals actually matter (this bit is to address Grey Wolf), yes, I have no trouble at all saying he shows horrifying irresponsibility getting drunk.

Which, again, leads to the conclusion that none of the gods really care about mortals except as chesspieces (Thor's handwringing about remembering all his worshipers aside) and thus they are all scum no matter what alignment is listed in their stat block.

(To be clear, "continuously operating the heavy machinery of the cosmos" was a reference to the "do not operate heavy machinery while on this" disclaimer found on some medicines. The point is that he regularly gets out-of-control drunk while having the power to drastically affect lots of people's lives, not that actual gears are involved.)
In fairness, i'd imagine half the reason he's drunk is BECAUSE he cares about mortals. If I just watched a world die in front of me, i'd need a drink too.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-01, 03:50 PM

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 04:37 PM

No creature can operate at 100% attention 100% of the time.
"Moments like this, I'm a little jealous of your mortal limitations. I can count them. I remember everyone who's ever worshipped me." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1140.html)

It's also a bit disingenuous to call Thor a "victim." He hasn't actually been harmed by Loki's machinations, while Hel and the dwarves both have, in different ways and to different degrees. If anything, Thor has come out ahead of where he was when he started.

Emanick

2019-07-01, 04:45 PM

"Moments like this, I'm a little jealous of your mortal limitations. I can count them. I remember everyone who's ever worshipped me." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1140.html)

The fact that Thor lacks many of our limitations does not mean that he lacks all of them. It's unclear to me whether he could have reasonably foreseen that getting drunk in what was presumably "downtime" could have been dangerous to anyone.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-01, 04:46 PM

"Moments like this, I'm a little jealous of your mortal limitations. I can count them. I remember everyone who's ever worshipped me." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1140.html)
Good memory doesn't mean, imply or is even vaguely connected, to the ability to be 100% on focus 100% of the time. In fact, the pain clearly distracts Thor. That he can feel emotions means he cannot be the kind of automaton Kish's logic requires.

It's also a bit disingenuous to call Thor a "victim." He hasn't actually been harmed by Loki's machinations, while Hel and the dwarves both have, in different ways and to different degrees. If anything, Thor has come out ahead of where he was when he started.

It sounds to me like he does feel pain for those he can't save from Hel. So yes, he is a victim. That others are even more victims doesn't somehow mean he isn't.

Grey Wolf

woweedd

2019-07-01, 04:47 PM

"Moments like this, I'm a little jealous of your mortal limitations. I can count them. I remember everyone who's ever worshipped me." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1140.html)

It's also a bit disingenuous to call Thor a "victim." He hasn't actually been harmed by Loki's machinations, while Hel and the dwarves both have, in different ways and to different degrees. If anything, Thor has come out ahead of where he was when he started.
He's the one who had to busy himself crafting the Dwarven society, not to mention arguing on their behalf against Hel, knowing that every failure means the torment of those worshippers. All because of a bet he never technically agreed to. Sounds pretty bad to me.

The fact that Thor lacks many of our limitations does not mean that he lacks all of them. It's unclear to me whether he could have reasonably foreseen that getting drunk in what was presumably "downtime" could have been dangerous to anyone.

I mean, one could argue that getting drunk whilst anywhere within the vicinity of Loki is a bad idea, but, honestly, the BEST idea would be for the gods to have some restrictions on verbal contracts, particularly ones formed with the signaotry was in an...alternated state of mind. But that was never going to happen, given that 1/3rd the Gods find "fairness" actively repellent, and another third are indifferent.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 04:51 PM

Good memory doesn't mean, imply or is even vaguely connected, to the ability to be 100% on focus 100% of the time.
The scene is there to show that Thor's awareness is not hampered by "mortal limitations." Mortal limitations include the inability to be 100 per cent focused 100 per cent of the time.

It sounds to me like he does feel pain for those he can't save from Hel. So yes, he is a victim.
That is an obvious stretch. Feeling sympathy does not make one a victim. A victim suffers some kind of harm.

woweedd

2019-07-01, 04:54 PM

The scene is there to show that Thor's awareness is not hampered by "mortal limitations." Mortal limitations include the inability to be 100 per cent focused 100 per cent of the time.

That is an obvious stretch. Feeling sympathy does not make one a victim. A victim suffers some kind of harm.
Thor clearly is capable of impaired judgement whilst drunk, which is the scenario under discussion. He agreed to a verbal contract whilst in an alternated state of mind. The enforcement of such a contract is contrary to any sane rulesetto begin with, but them's the break. The question is: KNOWING that a failure on his part COULD lead to innumberal suffering to others, even if it's a low chance, does that make Thor either callous, or incompetent?

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 04:55 PM

He's the one who had to busy himself crafting the Dwarven society,
Part of being a god in this world is demiurging. Thor would demiurge in the new world regardless of the bet. Furthermore, that he was not completely free to demiurge as he would please is no harm, because he would not be so free even if the bet had not occurred. He would be constrained by others' prior decisions and whatever other rules are in place.

not to mention arguing on their behalf against Hel]
As opposed to what? What would he rather be doing for those few minutes? Admittedly, a loss of free time is some harm, but he doesn't seem to lose very much of it over the course of eternity.

woweedd

2019-07-01, 05:03 PM

Part of being a god in this world is demiurging. Thor would demiurge in the new world regardless of the bet. Furthermore, that he was not completely free to demiurge as he would please is no harm, because he would not be so free even if the bet had not occurred. He would be constrained by others' prior decisions and whatever other rules are in place.

]
As opposed to what? What would he rather be doing for those few minutes? Admittedly, a loss of free time is some harm, but he doesn't seem to lose very much of it over the course of eternity.
I would argue that, regardless of whether Thor was harmed, he was still taken advantage of: He was held to a deal that he agreed to whilst he was in an altered state of mind. Whether he should have been in such a state is immaterial: The fact remains that the makers of said deal KNEW he was not in full possession of his faculatie, and did it anyway, tricking him into a deal he would not have agreed to were his mind unaltered. That is exploitation, and thus, victimization, regardless of the actions that allowed the victim to be exploited. I'm no lawyer, but i'm fairly certain that a verbal contract, agreed to while drunk, wouldn't hold up in court, even if the other two parties were sober, wouldn't you say?

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 05:08 PM

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 05:09 PM

I would argue that, regardless of whether Thor was harmed, he was still taken advantage of: He was held to a deal that he agreed to whilst he was in an altered state of mind. Whether he should have been in such a state is immaterial: The fact remains that the makers of said deal KNEW he was not in full possession of his faculatie, and did it anyway, tricking him into a deal he would not have agreed to were his mind unaltered. That is exploitation, and thus, victimization, regardless of the actions that allowed the victim to be exploited. I'm no lawyer, but i'm fairly certain that a verbal contract, agreed to while drunk, wouldn't hold up in court, even if the other two parties were sober, wouldn't you say?
This is Lucy v. Zehmer (https://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/contracts/contracts-keyed-to-murphy/the-bargain-relationship/lucy-v-zehmer-2/), which everyone reads in a first-year contracts course and a good example of why moral intuition is not a substitute for knowledge (viz. the bold). At common law, contracts made while intoxicated can indeed be enforced (there are of course degrees of intoxication, but Thor was not insensible). The issue is not the one party's state of mind, but what the other party reasonably believed them to have agreed to. Put another way, consent to enter a contract is not considered the same as consent to enter into a sexual encounter, and the rules from the latter are not applied straightforwardly to the former. Presumably this is because the commercial realm has different considerations and priorities than the bodily realm.

Tellingly, Thor has not ended the bet by pleading he couldn't have agreed to anything. Which, if the objective is to ensure the most dwarven souls go to their "proper" afterlives, would be the obvious thing to do. Hel would probably even agree to it, given the state to which the bet has driven her. Presumably, Thor either considers himself locked into the bet (which would be very Lawful), is going along with it for his own reasons (in which case he is putting those reasons over the souls of the dwarves and the health of his niece), or tried to plead that he couldn't have agreed to anything and lost (a likely scenario, given the No Backsies rule).

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 05:15 PM

How has Thor come ahead, exactly? Remember it isn't a Hel/Thor binary and there are still enough Odin worshippers that heir High Priest lives in the capital and at least at one point was more magically powerful than Thor's.
I didn't say "ahead of every other god," I said he had either broken even or come out ahead of where he started.

Emanick

2019-07-01, 05:27 PM

I mean, one could argue that getting drunk whilst anywhere within the vicinity of Loki is a bad idea, but, honestly, the BEST idea would be for the gods to have some restrictions on verbal contracts, particularly ones formed with the signaotry was in an...alternated state of mind. But that was never going to happen, given that 1/3rd the Gods find "fairness" actively repellent, and another third are indifferent.

Agreed. Of course, I imagine the Northern gods have the ability to instantaneously visit one another whenever they want, so for all we know, Thor may have gotten drunk while alone and Loki simply showed up, saw Thor was hammered and took advantage of the situation.

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 05:29 PM

I didn't say "ahead of every other god," I said he had either broken even or come out ahead of where he started.

No, you didn't, you wrote "If anything he came ahead of where he was when he started".
How is that true?

The rest of my post was a pre-emptive response to you saying "he gets more souls because most dwarves go to him" which wouldn,'t be supported by the comic.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-01, 05:33 PM

That is an obvious stretch. Feeling sympathy does not make one a victim. A victim suffers some kind of harm.

Emotional harm is still harm. Endless cruelties have been built on it. As any mother whose children have been disappeared by totalitarian regimes.

Grey Wolf

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 05:41 PM

No, you didn't, you wrote "If anything he came ahead of where he was when he started".
How is that true?
That "if anything" is doing a lot of work. It means "if his position changed at all, then. . . "

The rest of my post was a pre-emptive response to you saying "he gets more souls because most dwarves go to him" which wouldn,'t be supported by the comic.
And no, he wouldn't get more dwarves by the terms of the bet, but even if he didn't get more souls upon death than he would had the bet not been made, he would get extra worship in the meantime because of the outsized role he played in shaping dwarven society.

Emotional harm is still harm. Endless cruelties have been built on it. As any mother whose children have been disappeared by totalitarian regimes.
Comparing Thor's sympathetic but distant reaction to dwarven suffering, which is akin to the sympathy one might feel for war or disaster victims on the news, to a visceral cruelty like the disappearance of a family member, is crass and beneath you.

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 05:51 PM

That "if anything" is doing a lot of work. It means "if his position changed at all, then. . . "
And now you've completely lost me. His position on the bet? Why would it have changed? And how would it influence his gains.

And no, he wouldn't get more dwarves by the terms of the bet, but even if he didn't get more souls upon death than he would had the bet not been made, he would get extra worship in the meantime because of the outsized role he played in shaping dwarven society.
That I will grant.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 05:55 PM

And now you've completely lost me. His position on the bet?
His power relative to where he started. That's what the bet was about, remember, "who becomes more powerful in the new world, Thor or Hel."

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 05:58 PM

His power relative to where he started. That's what the bet was about, remember, "who becomes more powerful in the new world, Thor or Hel."
But how do you know that his new focus on dwarves hasn't come at the price of his focus on humans or others? After all, Thor is theoritically in the Bet as a control group of sort agaisnt which to weigh the results of Hel's new deal and we've never seen human worshippers of him while we've seen some of Loki and Freya for example.

Kish

2019-07-01, 06:01 PM

No creature can operate at 100% attention 100% of the time. Thor being blindsided by Loki's machinations with a third party during a downtime is not "horrifying irresponsib[le]", it is victim-blaming.

Grey Wolf
There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 06:04 PM

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.
Yeltsin smirks at you from beyond the grave, knowing from long experience that this is not true.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 06:06 PM

But how do you know that his new focus on dwarves hasn't come at the price of his focus on humans or others? After all, Thor is theoritically in the Bet as a control group of sort agaisnt which to weigh the results of Hel's new deal and we've never seen human worshippers of him while we've seen some of Loki and Freya for example.
We've seen Haley, and apparently at least part of Minnesota.

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 06:11 PM

We've seen Haley, and apparently at least part of Minnesota.

If Haley is a worshipper of Thor, I am a Nigerian prince (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam) who needs your help accessing his treasury.

Kish

2019-07-01, 06:15 PM

Yeltsin smirks at you from beyond the grave, knowing from long experience that this is not true.
Yeltsin...<rest of post elided because of no-politics rule>

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 06:16 PM

If Haley is a worshipper of Thor, I am a Nigerian prince (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam) who needs your help accessing his treasury.
Nigeria is a republic.

And if you don't like that example, Roy worships "the Northern Gods," presumably invoking whoever is appropriate to any given situation, if not terribly seriously. I'd venture a guess that this type of religiosity is the norm among Northern non-Clerics.

woweedd

2019-07-01, 06:47 PM

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.
I agree that Thor was and is irresponsible and often drunken when he shouldn't be. I just disagree that The Bet was one of those instances. He, explicitly, was NOT actively doing anything at that time. That's all on Loki and Hel.

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 06:58 PM

Nigeria is a republic.
I included a direct link to the Nigerian Prince scam's wikipedia page!

And if you don't like that example, Roy worships "the Northern Gods," presumably invoking whoever is appropriate to any given situation, if not terribly seriously. I'd venture a guess that this type of religiosity is the norm among Northern non-Clerics.
We know Sigdi worshipped Thor above the others even before Durkon was a Cleric, same with that random ssoldier who served as an example of the 4 godly nutrients. And if you're saying that dwarves are special and without the Bet the Gods are only worshipped individually by their Clerics, wouldn't Hel already be in the lead soul-wise?

I would bet that henotheism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism) is the most common option, with people worshipping mostly the god most relevant to their profession/identity/background/centers of interest and occasionnally worshipping others whenever appropriate

Peelee

2019-07-01, 06:58 PM

Nigeria is a republic.

Well sure, once they deposed the king and locked his son out of their bank accounts!

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-01, 07:22 PM

I included a direct link to the Nigerian Prince scam's wikipedia page!
And I gave a reason why anybody who falls for it is lacking the least bit of worldliness and probably deserves to.

Fyraltari

2019-07-01, 07:24 PM

And I gave a reason why anybody who falls for it is lacking the least bit of worldliness and probably deserves to.
That's most likely intentionnal on the scammers' part.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-01, 07:47 PM

Comparing Thor's sympathetic but distant reaction to dwarven suffering, which is akin to the sympathy one might feel for war or disaster victims on the news, to a visceral cruelty like the disappearance of a family member, is crass and beneath you.

And now you're seemingly referring to some other comic, not OotS. You have no leg to stand on, clearly.

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.

None of which changes he was in downtime, and thus like a human, getting drunk would not get him fired. The worst that he can be accurately accused of is not having the predictive understanding of how bad it'd be, while drunk, while on a break. He is not Odin, he is not all-knowing, nor all-powerful, nor a perfectly emotionless robot that can be required to be guarded against CE all the time.

Grey Wolf

Rogar Demonblud

2019-07-01, 11:36 PM

I included a direct link to the Nigerian Prince scam's wikipedia page!

What, you couldn't link to Irregular (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/359.html) Webcomic (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/361.html)?

Kish

2019-07-02, 10:15 AM

None of which changes he was in downtime,

Yeah, it does.

Look, with massive power comes some trivial amount of responsibility. If you can catastrophically alter billions or more other people's lives with one syllable, you don't get "downtime," defined as "you can cheerfully get so drunk you can't process anything other people are saying." It's hardly a gross imposition on Thor to say that if he chooses to indulge his rampant alcoholism, it says something bad about him if he also remains in a position where he can hurt other people while drunk. There's no proper analogy for Thor because even the President of the United States doesn't have access to the nuclear codes during downtime (and while countries exist where one person can declare war unilaterally regardless of state of sobriety, let's just say that analogizing any of those rulers to Thor would not be a defense of him), but, most places I know have laws against driving while drunk, even during "downtime." And trying to convince me those laws should be repealed rather than made much more stringent would be entirely futile.

woweedd

2019-07-02, 11:50 AM

Yeah, it does.

Look, with massive power comes some trivial amount of responsibility. If you can catastrophically alter billions or more other people's lives with one syllable, you don't get "downtime," defined as "you can cheerfully get so drunk you can't process anything other people are saying." It's hardly a gross imposition on Thor to say that if he chooses to indulge his rampant alcoholism, it says something bad about him if he also remains in a position where he can hurt other people while drunk. There's no proper analogy for Thor because even the President of the United States doesn't have access to the nuclear codes during downtime (and while countries exist where one person can declare war unilaterally regardless of state of sobriety, let's just say that analogizing any of those rulers to Thor would not be a defense of him), but, most places I know have laws against driving while drunk, even during "downtime." And trying to convince me those laws should be repealed rather than made much more stringent would be entirely futile.
That position is "existing as a deity". Again, the best position would be to change the god laws so that verbal contracts forming whist one of the parties was in an alternate state of consciousness aren't able to be enforced, but, then, the powerful trickster god caucus wouldn't stand for it.

Fyraltari

2019-07-02, 12:05 PM

That position is "existing as a deity". Again, the best position would be to change the god laws so that verbal contracts forming whist one of the parties was in an alternate state of consciousness aren't able to be enforced, but, then, the powerful trickster god caucus wouldn't stand for it.

We don't know that the contract is solely verbal though. Maybe Loki had Thor and Hel sign stuff too.

woweedd

2019-07-02, 12:14 PM

We don't know that the contract is solely verbal though. Maybe Loki had Thor and Hel sign stuff too.
I somehow doubt it. Loki doesn't seem like the type to bind himself to written terms, and Thor would refuse were he vaguely sober.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-02, 01:25 PM

Yeah, it does.

No, it really doesn't. What you are suggesting as the alternative is guaranteed to render any caring individual either catatonic or insane. Since the gods can't be fired, denying them the ability to downtime and instead expect of them eternal guarding or be accused of causing the problem they were in fact the victim of would turn these people into even more monstrous versions of what they are. At least this Thor cares. Force him to never be able to have time to cope, he'll stop caring, and then instead of a vaguely dysfunctional pantheon, the OotS would end with Cthulhu's Elders. And none of what you said in any way explains why in this scenario you continue to focus on blaming the victim rather than the actual cause.

Grey Wolf

Fyraltari

2019-07-02, 02:06 PM

I somehow doubt it. Loki doesn't seem like the type to bind himself to written terms, and Thor would refuse were he vaguely sober.
Loki would refuse to sign any contract written by somebody else, sure. But when he's writing it? And not even party to it?
Besides, "sign" was more of placeholder for whatever magic the gods would use to make the agreement official. The Blood Oath, for example, uses tatoos.

No, it really doesn't. What you are suggesting as the alternative is guaranteed to render any caring individual either catatonic or insane. Since the gods can't be fired, denying them the ability to downtime and instead expect of them eternal guarding or be accused of causing the problem they were in fact the victim of would turn these people into even more monstrous versions of what they are.
Grey Wolf

I'm pretty sure that's what happened to most of (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0999.html) the Northern Pantheon. "Whatever Thor and Odin say goes for me", "Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure", "I'm bored with this world anyway", "I don't really care one way or another, but I'd rather do less work", "This world's time has passed".

woweedd

2019-07-02, 02:37 PM

Loki would refuse to sign any contract written by somebody else, sure. But when he's writing it? And not even party to it?
Besides, "sign" was more of placeholder for whatever magic the gods would use to make the agreement official. The Blood Oath, for example, uses tatoos.

I'm pretty sure that's what happened to most of (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0999.html) the Northern Pantheon. "Whatever Thor and Odin say goes for me", "Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure", "I'm bored with this world anyway", "I don't really care one way or another, but I'd rather do less work", "This world's time has passed".
Yeah, as i've said, that kinda makes a lot more sense when you know they're saying this after millennia of watching billions inevitably die at either their own hands or the claws of that scribbly bastard. Frankly, ANYONE would start going a bit insane in that scenario, i'd think.

Worldsong

2019-07-03, 08:54 AM

Gotta agree with the assessment that if you force a caring person to never take time off, never allow them to do silly and irresponsible things, they're guaranteed going to end up stark raving mad.

Also gotta agree with the assessment that this sounds a lot like victim blaming: "I should have known that there's a trickster god who is permanently waiting outside of my door to burst in and make a mess of things so it's only fair that I can never have any fun ever." How about instead we whack the trickster god for jumping his fellow god during a moment of weakness and gleefully abusing it?

And as third agreement, there's been people saying that all the gods are bastards because of how they behave during the Godsmoot, and in a vacuum yes the vast majority of them would be despicable. But they're not living in a vacuum, they're living in a scenario where they've had to watch all they've tried to create and care for either be ripped apart into oblivion or forcefully terminated to avoid oblivion. Again and again and again and again. And apparently they can't forget either. It's like if someone's family was killed and in their grief they can't handle interaction and you point at them and say "Look at that bad person, shouting and yelling at people who are trying to be nice to them." And then multiplied by... I dunno, several magnitudes.

Of course it IS entirely possible that the gods were always twisted, but personally I'd say that is a bit overly pessimistic of a perspective.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-03, 09:38 AM

Gotta agree with the assessment that if you force a caring person to never take time off, never allow them to do silly and irresponsible things, they're guaranteed going to end up stark raving mad.
That seems like a mortal limitation that the gods don't have. We know what causes gods - including Odin and Hel - to go stark raving mad, and it isn't impositions on their time. It's mortal belief, or an imbalanced divine diet.

Also gotta agree with the assessment that this sounds a lot like victim blaming
I have yet to see any convincing evidence that Thor is actually a victim, in the sense of having suffered some substantial harm. Putting that aside, sometimes the victim does bear part of the blame. Take a pedestrian texting while jaywalking, who is hit by a car. Neither the pedestrian nor the driver is wholly blameless. Figuring out who is more blameworthy, and to what degree, is of course a thorny question, and avoiding it is a big reason why insurance exists.

Peelee

2019-07-03, 09:47 AM

That seems like a mortal limitation that the gods don't have. We know what causes gods - including Odin and Hel - to go stark raving mad, and it isn't impositions on their time.

Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. We know one thing that causes gods to go mad.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-03, 09:53 AM

Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. We know one thing that causes gods to go mad.
The post I quoted in fact made unfounded assumptions from mortal experience. But there are facts out there about what can cause deities to go mad, and in light of them, we can draw equivalences. Is being denied free time enough like being denied a balanced diet, like Hel, or being fed poison, like Odin, that we can infer that being denied free time would cause a god to go mad? Or is it so unlike those things that we cannot so infer? We should keep in mind when making inferences that 1) mortals go mad when denied free time because they require mental rest and 2) a god's mental processing power is far beyond a mortal's, and is implied to be practically limitless.

Worldsong

2019-07-03, 10:10 AM

That seems like a mortal limitation that the gods don't have. We know what causes gods - including Odin and Hel - to go stark raving mad, and it isn't impositions on their time. It's mortal belief, or an imbalanced divine diet.

There's more than one way for someone's mental state to deteriorate, and there's usually more than one way for deterioration to occur.

The balanced diet thing is a fast working method of making a god go wonky, never being able to relax can just as easily be a slow-working method and while gods are more resilient than mortals to assume that they are immune to stress is an assumption.

I have yet to see any convincing evidence that Thor is actually a victim, in the sense of having suffered some substantial harm. Putting that aside, sometimes the victim does bear part of the blame. Take a pedestrian texting while jaywalking, who is hit by a car. Neither the pedestrian nor the driver is wholly blameless. Figuring out who is more blameworthy, and to what degree, is of course a thorny question, and avoiding it is a big reason why insurance exists.

The argument was put forth that Thor genuinely cares for his followers and thus suffers when he sees them suffer. You dismissed it as being crass to compare what Thor goes through to the emotional impact of losing a family member. That said I don't find it that poor a comparison so I'll support it even if it fails to convince you.

And yes there are plenty of examples where the victim is also to blame, but in this scenario it feels off to focus on how Thor is a bad god for wanting to unwind after a stressful experience rather than looking at Loki being Loki.

The post I quoted in fact made unfounded assumptions from mortal experience. But there are facts out there about what can cause deities to go mad, and in light of them, we can draw equivalences. Is being denied free time enough like being denied a balanced diet, like Hel, or being fed poison, like Odin, that we can infer that being denied free time would cause a god to go mad? Or is it so unlike those things that we cannot so infer? We should keep in mind when making inferences that 1) mortals go mad when denied free time because they require mental rest and 2) a god's mental processing power is far beyond a mortal's, and is implied to be practically limitless.

It's true that my stance is based on comparing gods to mortals, and that I don't have concrete evidence. However neither side has concrete evidence and the behaviour of the gods so far has been notably similar to what you would expect from mortal folk, so even if I can't claim it's 100% certain to be correct it's not like it's an assumption drawn from thin air with no basis in the comic.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-03, 10:16 AM

TAnd yes there are plenty of examples where the victim is also to blame, but in this scenario it feels off to focus on how Thor is a bad god for wanting to unwind after a stressful experience rather than looking at Loki being Loki.
We can do both. The difference is, no one (or so few people that I haven't noticed them) is defending Loki, while Thor does have his partisans. So Thor draws the bulk of the discussion. Which is good, because an actual discussion is preferable to a Two Minutes' Hate.

MultitudeMan

2019-07-10, 02:05 PM

Fyraltari

2019-07-10, 02:22 PM

He's using external circumstances to pressure another party into blatlantly disregarding an agreement he made so, ... No?

Peelee

2019-07-10, 02:23 PM

With new data present in the latest strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1170.html), does this shift anyone's opinion towards Thor being NG rather than CG? His gambit doesn't seem Chaotic in essence, nor is he enacting it in a Chaotic way.

It seems like the height of Chaos to me. By the terms of the bet, those souls are undeniably Hel's. Thor is using this opportunity to distract Hel while also doing an end-run around the bet. Complete opposite of Lawful, well past Neutral.

Sylian

2019-07-10, 03:46 PM

Thor is violating the spirit of the rules and making troll-like arguments. Chances are Loki will make similar arguments, and Loki is undoubtedly Chaotic. It seems fairly likely that Thor is Chaotic Good.

Worldsong

2019-07-10, 03:47 PM

With new data present in the latest strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1170.html), does this shift anyone's opinion towards Thor being NG rather than CG? His gambit doesn't seem Chaotic in essence, nor is he enacting it in a Chaotic way.

No, this comes across as pretty damn Chaotic to me.

It bears repeating, but the reason why Thor isn't blatantly breaking the rules is because the rules the gods live by were created because the alternative to those rules was much, much worse. He doesn't show a single shred of respect or desire for those rules, he only follows them because he doesn't have much of a choice (potentially destroying creation is not a valid choice).

What do you think a Chaotic person will do if there's circumstances preventing them from just breaking rules (such as the threat of dying if they're caught)? Use every single loophole they can think of to violate the spirit of those rules, and do so with much glee and enthusiasm. Which is what Thor is doing.

woweedd

2019-07-10, 05:22 PM

No, this comes across as pretty damn Chaotic to me.

It bears repeating, but the reason why Thor isn't blatantly breaking the rules is because the rules the gods live by were created because the alternative to those rules was much, much worse. He doesn't show a single shred of respect or desire for those rules, he only follows them because he doesn't have much of a choice (potentially destroying creation is not a valid choice).

What do you think a Chaotic person will do if there's circumstances preventing them from just breaking rules (such as the threat of dying if they're caught)? Use every single loophole they can think of to violate the spirit of those rules, and do so with much glee and enthusiasm. Which is what Thor is doing.
See also: Using the fact that Minrah had technically heard of The Gates as a good-enough loophole to let her in on the world-saving scheme.

Aquillion

2019-07-10, 05:37 PM

We can do both. The difference is, no one (or so few people that I haven't noticed them) is defending Loki, while Thor does have his partisans. So Thor draws the bulk of the discussion. Which is good, because an actual discussion is preferable to a Two Minutes' Hate.
Actually, there's been extensive discussion over whether Loki is Evil and whether he's Chaotic in the character stats thread (it matters on several points - granting turning vs. rebuking, Hilgya having to be at most one step from his alignment, etc.)

King of Nowhere

2019-07-10, 11:01 PM

it's quite curious that subverting the rules from inside is considered lawful if done for evil purposes, chaotic if done for good ones.

but regardless, it's clear that thor dislikes the rules, or sees them as a necessary evil at best. but breaking them would have dire consequences, so he's working with the tools available.

deuterio12

2019-07-10, 11:24 PM

What do you think a Chaotic person will do if there's circumstances preventing them from just breaking rules (such as the threat of dying if they're caught)?

As a matter of fact, chaotic people will indeed put their life in the line and outright break the rules when push comes to shove. See basically every shonen anime where protagonists go "if there's not a way, we'll make one". If there's a maze, just punch/blast your way directly through the walls, and worry about the consequences later/never.

Like Belkar spends most of his time risking his life by breaking rules, and not even a Geas/Quest spell could keep him in line.

but regardless, it's clear that thor dislikes the rules, or sees them as a necessary evil at best. but breaking them would have dire consequences, so he's working with the tools available.

That's the definition of neutral pretty much.

hamishspence

2019-07-10, 11:39 PM

woweedd

2019-07-11, 12:52 AM

Fyraltari

2019-07-11, 02:24 AM

it's quite curious that subverting the rules from inside is considered lawful if done for evil purposes, chaotic if done for good ones.

Thor isn't subverting the rules here, he's flat-out ignoring them because he can. That's not uqing a loophole, that's extortion.

Morty

2019-07-11, 03:22 AM

I'm really not sure if every course of action needs to have an alignment applied to it.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 04:00 AM

I'm really not sure if every course of action needs to have an alignment applied to it.
What do you think Neutral is for? And, yes, I know the point you're trying to make, and i'm heading it off, thank you very much.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 05:26 AM

Thor's action there could be pinned as NG if he were breaking the Law both in letter and spirit to save Good souls. That would be "favoring the Greater Good over the Law".

However, he is saving all dwarven damned souls in bulk, whithout caring about sorting the ones that actually DO deserve to rot in Hel. So that would be "favoring the Greater Neutral over the Law", at best.

What Thor is doing, is to restore the freedom of choice of dwarves. They each go to the afterlive they chose according to their actions in life. Evil dwarves will still go to evil aligned planes and have miserable afterlives, but will go to the miserable afterlife of their choice, not the one chosen by Hel.

That is "favoring Personal freedom over the Greater Good". Which pins as out of the book CG behaviour.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 05:48 AM

Thor's action there could be pinned as NG if he were breaking the Law both in letter and spirit to save Good souls. That would be "favoring the Greater Good ovet the Law".

However, he is saving all dwarven damned souls in bulk, whithout caring about sorting the ones that actually DO deserve to rot in Hel. So that would be "favoring the Greater Neutral over the Law", at best.

What Thor is doing, is to restore the freedom of choice of dwarves. They each go to the afterlive they chose according to their actions in life. Evil dwarves will still go to evil aligned planes and have miserable afterlives, but will go to the miserable afterlife of their choice, not the one chosen by Hel.

That is "favoring Personal freedom over the Greater Good". Which pins as out of the book CG behaviour.
I don't quite get what you're trying to say, but I feel like it's an insult to NG, and probably LG too.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 06:38 AM

I don't quite get what you're trying to say, but I feel like it's an insult to NG, and probably LG too.

What I am trying to say is that:
- The difference between a NG and a LG is that the NG is willing to dump Law if it promotes the Greater Good.
- The difference between a NG and a CG is that the NG is willing to dump Chaos if it promotes the Greater Good.
- The difference between a NG and a CG is that a NG is not sufficiently motivated to break Law for anything less than the Greater Good, while a CG would promote Chaos over Law on general principle.
- Likewise, the difference between a NG and a LG is that a NG is not sufficiently motivated to dump Chaos for anything lesd than the Greater Good, while a LG would promote Law over Chaos on general principle.

Applied to the given scenario, a NG would certainly act the way Thor does in order to save Good souls. But would not disturb Order to care for Evil souls that will go to an Evil plane anyway.

hamishspence

2019-07-11, 06:41 AM

Applied to the given scenario, a NG would certainly act the way Thor does in order to save Good souls. But would not disturb Order to help Evil souls, and probably not for Neutral ones either.

"Save them all, and let the gods sort them out" is the classic Good counterpart to "Kill them all, and let the gods sort them out"

As such, Thor's "saving Evil and Neutral souls along with the Good ones" is perfectly in character for Good.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 06:44 AM

hamishspence

2019-07-11, 06:51 AM

But they are already dead and their souls have already been sorted by the Gods.

No, they haven't. That's the point of the Deal - that it circumvents the "sorting process" - sending "those who died dishonorably" to Hel, regardless of where they would have gone if their lives as a whole had been judged.

RatElemental

2019-07-11, 06:54 AM

What I am trying to say is that:
- The difference between a NG and a LG is that the NG is willing to dump Law if it promotes the Greater Good.
- The difference between a NG and a CG is that the NG is willing to dump Chaos if it promotes the Greater Good.
- The difference between a NG and a CG is that a NG is not sufficiently motivated to break Law for anything less than the Greater Good, while a CG would promote Chaos over Law on general principle.
- Likewise, the difference between a NG and a LG is that a NG is not sufficiently motivated to dump Chaos for anything lesd than the Greater Good, while a LG would promote Law over Chaos on general principle.

Applied to the given scenario, a NG would certainly act the way Thor does in order to save Good souls. But would not disturb Order to care for Evil souls that will go to an Evil plane anyway.

Respect for the dignity of sentient creatures as a general principle is pretty firmly good, and that would allow any good alignment to free at least all neutral souls from Hel, probably even evil too.

Worldsong

2019-07-11, 06:54 AM

As a matter of fact, chaotic people will indeed put their life in the line and outright break the rules when push comes to shove. See basically every shonen anime where protagonists go "if there's not a way, we'll make one". If there's a maze, just punch/blast your way directly through the walls, and worry about the consequences later/never.

Like Belkar spends most of his time risking his life by breaking rules, and not even a Geas/Quest spell could keep him in line.

Okay, no.

This is a misconception people often have and it ties into how Chaotic often ends up being portrayed as the most questionable side of the alignment system because it leads to people assuming that to be Chaotic you have to be stupid or nuts.

For your example you chose one of the worst options for realistic portrayals of personality types. In shonen anime the protagonists do that because the writers will ensure that it'll work out. In a more realistic scenario the majority of Chaotic people will realize that there's limitations to what they can hope to accomplish, and that refusing to bow their heads once in a while isn't a sign of bravery or true Chaotic-ness, it's bull-headed stupidity.

Yes there are extreme people who will let themselves be killed before they surrender any amount of freedom, but they're called extremists for a reason. They're on the same level as Lawful folk who refuse to break their code/system for any reason no matter how blatantly obvious it is that going outside of the established system would work out better for themselves and everyone else. These extremists do not set the minimum requirements for either Lawful or Chaotic in the slightest, just like how a Good person can decide not to sacrifice their life for a hopeless cause without it meaning they're no longer Good.

Chaotic people are in fact perfectly capable of making rational decisions, and they don't have the superpower of always finding a way to preserve their freedom under any and all circumstances.

EDIT: also the suggestion that Chaotic people will ignore consequences and not think ahead is downright insulting.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 06:56 AM

But they are already dead and their souls have already been sorted by the Gods.

Thor, yes, is being Good. Chaotic Good. A Neutral Good would only upset the Deal in order to help Good souls, it wouldn't be worth for him or her to take a stance in the Law-Chaos axis for anything less.

No they have not. They have been sorted unfairly. People are in peril, save them. Any Good person would do that. The question is how: All other things being equal, LG goes for the Lawful option, CG goes for the Chaotic method, and NG goes for whichever method will accomplish the most Good the most effectively. A NG person follows only Good: If a law is Good, they follow it. If a law is bad, they break it. They’ll do Good by Lawful OR Chaotic, whichever suits the situation.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 07:05 AM

Respect for the dignity of sentient creatures as a general principle is pretty firmly good, and that would allow any good alignment to free at least all neutral souls from Hel, probably even evil too.

Neutral, maybe. Freeing Neutral souls from an Evil plane for them to go to a Neutral one might be seen as a service for the greater good. Evils, not, that is just taking a stance in the Law-Chaos axis to allow freeloaders switch evil plane.

It would be different if the act of freeing the souls would give them a chance for redemption. But it does not. Their lot is already set.

Morty

2019-07-11, 07:08 AM

What do you think Neutral is for? And, yes, I know the point you're trying to make, and i'm heading it off, thank you very much.

I'm actually not entirely clear on what it's for, since it seems to come up very rarely in these arguments. But something that both a something-Good and presumably Chaotic Evil deity are doing for the same reason (that is to say, save the world from ending and an unstable despot from taking over) seems like a decent candidate for the label. That they're using obstructive bureaucracy to do it is because it's the best tool they have at the moment, not because of morality.

Granted, I'm really not sure what the difference is between Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, so it's difficult to decide which of those Thor is.

Worldsong

2019-07-11, 07:13 AM

I'm actually not entirely clear on what it's for, since it seems to come up very rarely in these arguments. But something that both a something-Good and presumably Chaotic Evil deity are doing for the same reason (that is to say, save the world from ending and an unstable despot from taking over) seems like a decent candidate for the label.

Granted, I'm really not sure what the difference is between Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, so it's difficult to decide which of those Thor is.

Neutral is often difficult to pin down since the only way to reliably define Neutral in either axis would be to say that Good, Evil, Lawful and Chaotic are all reserved for extremists. In which case Neutral would immediately hold the majority of people.

And of course there's the issue that the alignment system just isn't perfect and you can't easily put anyone inside a block of defined characteristics.

Even the afterlives acknowledge this issue since they made afterlives for people who sit between Neutral and something else. For example the Beastlands, which is the afterlife for people who sit between Chaotic Good and Neutral Good.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 07:22 AM

No they have not. They have been sorted unfairly.

Unfairly? According to what definition of "Fair"? There was a Pact written before the creation of the world. The souls gone to Hel have been sorted to that domain Lawfuly.

A CG would care for all souls, just to promote Chaos over Law. But a NG would only care for the Good ones, as NG doesn't promotes Chaos over Law, only Good over Evil.

All other things being equal, LG goes for the Lawful option, CG goes for the Chaotic method, and NG goes for whichever method will accomplish the most Good the most effectively.

See, that's the reason why people don't see any difference betwen NG and CG. All I am attempting to do in this thread is give a reason for a NG alignment to exist at all.

And that reason is:
- NG will promote Good in spite of Law or Chaos.
- NG will not take a stance in a Law-Chaos issue if there is no Good involved.

And there is no Good involved in the decission to which Evil plane send an Evil soul to. There is a Law-Chaos one, though. A LG would say "the soul belong to Hel, according to Law ". A CG would say "the soul belong to Abyss, just to flip the finger at Law". The NG would say "I do not bother" and thus not move.

Worldsong

2019-07-11, 07:32 AM

Unfairly? According to what definition of "Fair"? There was a Pact written before the creation of the world. The souls gone to Hel have been sorted to that domain Lawfuly.

A CG would care for all souls, just to promote Chaos over Law. But a NG would only care for the Good ones, as NG doesn't promotes Chaos over Law, only Good over Evil.

See, that's the reason why people don't see any difference betwen NG and CG. All I am attempting to do in this thread is give a reason for a NG alignment to exist at all.

And that reason is:
- NG will promote Good in spite of Law or Chaos.
- NG will not take a stance in a Law-Chaos issue if there is no Good involved.

And there is no Good involved in the decission to which Evil plane send an Evil soul to. There is a Law-Chaos one, though. A LG would say "the soul belong to Hel, according to Law ". A CG would say "the soul belong to Abyss, just to flip the finger at Law". The NG would say "I do not bother" and thus not move.

A Lawful God could also argue that the Bet is making a mess of the sorting system for souls by taking a good portion of souls out of the system through some arbitrary ruling between two/three gods, and getting as many souls away from Hel is the Lawful thing to do by putting those souls back into the official sorting system everybody else seems to be using.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 07:37 AM

Unfairly? According to what definition of "Fair"? There was a Pact written before the creation of the world. The souls gone to Hel have been sorted to that domain Lawfuly.

A CG would care for all souls, just to promote Chaos over Law. But a NG would only care for the Good ones, as NG doesn't promotes Chaos over Law, only Good over Evil.

See, that's the reason why people don't see any difference betwen NG and CG. All I am attempting to do in this thread is give a reason for a NG alignment to exist at all.

And that reason is:
- NG will promote Good in spite of Law or Chaos.
- NG will not take a stance in a Law-Chaos issue if there is no Good involved.

And there is no Good involved in the decission to which Evil plane send an Evil soul to. There is a Law-Chaos one, though. A LG would say "the soul belong to Hel, according to Law ". A CG would say "the soul belong to Abyss, just to flip the finger at Law". The NG would say "I do not bother" and thus not move.
No, a GOOD person cares for all souls. No one deserves to be condemned to Hel for dying of pneumonia, and a LG person wouldn’t approve of it. They’d just go about solving it differently.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 08:06 AM

No, a GOOD person cares for all souls.

Cares for all the living to live a good life and have their souls go to a Good Afterlife. But those are already dead. And the evil ones are going to evil planes. Why would a Good Deity care about what particular Evil plane an evil soul goes for torture? Other than Law-Chaos reasons, for which a Neutral holds no concern.

No one deserves to be condemned to Hel for dying of pneumonia and a LG person wouldn’t approve of it.

He would if the damned one were Evil, because the soul ended up were it deserved, and according to the Laws.

They’d just go about solving it differently.

Yes, he would solve it in differently. For example, building up an ever tighter dwarven society to ensure no one dies "dishonorably", instead of having to spit in the letter and the spirit of the Laws to save them at the last minute.

Fyraltari

2019-07-11, 08:19 AM

Cares for all the living to live a good life and have their souls go to a Good Afterlife. But those are already dead. And the evil ones are going to evil planes. Why would a Good Deity care about what particular Evil plane an evil soul goes for torture? Other than Law-Chaos reasons, for which a Neutral holds no concern.

Yeah but in order to know which one are evil they'd need to have these souls reviewed, don't you think, like in some kind of interview to determine which afterlife suits them?

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 08:32 AM

Yeah but in order to know which one are evil they'd need to have these souls reviewed, don't you think, like in some kind of interview to determine which afterlife suits them?

Which is why a LG deity would have insisted on reviewing every single soul instead of accepting a general pardon, like Thor accepted. Bonus points as it would have better seved the purpose of keeping Hel distracted. He doesn't saves as many good souls, but keeps Hel busy and keeps respect for Law enforced. A fine compromise between Law and Greater Good.

A NG would have accepted general pardon for the Good Souls, but would have insisted on reviewing the Neutrals and most definitelly the Evil ones, as it would have served the Greater Good (freeing good souls, keeping Hel distracted) and also would have been a fine compromise between Law and Chaos.

But Thor is CG so he takes on the chance of fliping the finger on the Deal even if it means he cannot keep Hel distracted for long enough, relying instead on his CE brother to get the job done.

Fyraltari

2019-07-11, 08:37 AM

Which is why a LG deity would have insisted on reviewing every single soul instead of accepting a general pardon, like Thor accepted. Bonus points as it would have better seved the purpose of keeping Hel distracted.A compromise between Law and Greater Good.

A NG would have accepted general pardon for the Good Souls, but would have insisted on reviewing the Neutrals and most definitelly the Evil ones, as it would have served the Greater Good (freeing good souls, keeping Hel distracted) and also would have been a fine compromise between Law and Chaos.

But Thor is CG so he takes on the chance of fliping the finger on the Deal even if it means he cannot keep Hel distracted for long enough, and relying on his CE brother to get the job done.
But they're not getting a pardon, they're getting the review! Dying with honour only means they get the usual deal: each of these souls will be be judged and sent where it belongs.

HorizonWalker

2019-07-11, 09:25 AM

There's also the fact that Good people generally tend to do nice things for everyone, not just other Good people. It's all well and good to stick your neck out for the heroes and saints, but it's even better to not be picky and stick your neck out for everyone, not just the people you like. Besides, at this point, they're all dead; their ability to do any further Good or Evil is sharply limited to whatever they say to whoever's in earshot. There's no real danger associated with saving someone who's Evil, only the risk of upsetting someone's sensibilities about what people deserve.

Thankfully, Thor's Chaotic Good, and apparently of the firm belief that "Words aren't as important as people." (giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html) He doesn't care that some of these dwarves "deserve" to rot in Helheim forever. They're people, and every last one of them needs a fair shot at the afterlife, and one way or another, Thor's gonna make sure they get it.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 10:21 AM

I'm still blind to the relation between changing the place of eternal torture of an Evil soul and "sticking your neck for someone".

woweedd

2019-07-11, 04:30 PM

I'm still blind to the relation between changing the place of eternal torture of an Evil soul and "sticking your neck for someone".
Thor does not know which souls are Good and which ones are Evil. The souls who went to Hel were never reviewed, like Roy was, because their destination got diverted. Thus, their alignment was never determined. Thus, he saves all of them, so they may go on to whatever afterlife they would normally face. He does not have the ability to ONLY save the Good/Neutral ones, because their Alignment was never found. And, in my opion, any Good being would agree that eveyr creature at least deserves the opportunity to get a Good afterlife, rather then being condemned solely for the method of death.

RatElemental

2019-07-11, 04:45 PM

Besides, at this point, they're all dead; their ability to do any further Good or Evil is sharply limited to whatever they say to whoever's in earshot. There's no real danger associated with saving someone who's Evil, only the risk of upsetting someone's sensibilities about what people deserve.

Not entirely true. Each soul that lands in one of the evil planes will end up empowering evil on a cosmic scale, even if their individual contribution is a tiny drop in an ocean. Further, new devils and demons need to come from somewhere and (to my knowledge) in the default cosmology of DND they come from souls who have eventually been tortured so long they lose their original sense of self and become a lemure, which can then climb the fiendish hierarchy.

Fyraltari

2019-07-11, 04:55 PM

Not entirely true. Each soul that lands in one of the evil planes will end up empowering evil on a cosmic scale, even if their individual contribution is a tiny drop in an ocean. Further, new devils and demons need to come from somewhere and (to my knowledge) in the default cosmology of DND they come from souls who have eventually been tortured so long they lose their original sense of self and become a lemure, which can then climb the fiendish hierarchy.

That's about equivalent to them empowering Hel, cosmically speaking, isn't it?

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 05:01 PM

Thor does not know which souls are Good and which ones are Evil.

Last time I checked, "Detect Evil" was a 1st Level Clerical Spell in 3.5.

Fyraltari

2019-07-11, 05:03 PM

Last time I checked, "Detect Evil" was a 1st Level Clerical Spell in 3.5.

Thor's not a Cleric now, is he?

woweedd

2019-07-11, 05:05 PM

Last time I checked, "Detect Evil" was a 1st Level Clerical Spell in 3.5.
Roy would Detect as Lawful Good, but he could have easily have been sorted into True Neutral or Neutral Good had his Deva been less forgiving. The review, presumably, exists for a reason.

Not entirely true. Each soul that lands in one of the evil planes will end up empowering evil on a cosmic scale, even if their individual contribution is a tiny drop in an ocean. Further, new devils and demons need to come from somewhere and (to my knowledge) in the default cosmology of DND they come from souls who have eventually been tortured so long they lose their original sense of self and become a lemure, which can then climb the fiendish hierarchy.
Oh, trust me, my desire to save people from eternal torment they may or maynot deserve has NOTHING to do with D&D metaphysics. To use the quote any Good creature would do well to live by, "I would rather ten guilty men go free then one innocent man be punished". Which is actually even more applicable here, because they're not going free: They're getting reviewed, as would be normal, had they not had the unfortunate luck to be born Dwarven. Even a Lawful creature should be able to recognize that such a Law is unjust, and should be abolished. Part of being Lawful GOOD is being able to recognize Laws that serve Evil.

Worldsong

2019-07-11, 06:02 PM

Last time I checked, "Detect Evil" was a 1st Level Clerical Spell in 3.5.

I'm going to assume that the review system they have to determine your rightful afterlife exists for a reason and isn't completely invalidated by a single spell.

Like those police guys said, divination magic isn't totally reliable.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-11, 06:20 PM

I'm going to assume that the review system they have to determine your rightful afterlife exists for a reason and isn't completely invalidated by a single spell.

Both Thor and Loki carried a lot of documentation about each soul, so I bet they have done the research anyway.

The MunchKING

2019-07-11, 06:25 PM

Thor's not a Cleric now, is he?

From Deities & Demigods, IIRC, a God can cast any spell he can grant to his clerics. Possibly at will and as many times as he/she wants. I'd have to check.

EDIT: Ok, they need a level of a divine casting class, and they burn spell slots like a cleric spontaneously converting their spells to Cure/Inflict spells.

So if Thor had no divine casting class in him, he couldn't cast all the spells he could grant.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 06:33 PM

Both Thor and Loki carried a lot of documentation about each soul, so I bet they have done the research anyway.
But they explicitly didn't go through the review process. And, even if they were Evi, they deserve a chance to verify it. GOds, after all,a re no embodiments of Law and Good.

HorizonWalker

2019-07-11, 07:14 PM

The documentation may just be a prop to help communicate "yes I do in fact seriously intend to stand here and talk about this at length," given the twin facts that 1) Thor remembers every person who's ever worshipped him, and 2) Thor and Loki aren't doing legitimate bureaucracy, they're running a con.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 07:46 PM

From Deities & Demigods, IIRC, a God can cast any spell he can grant to his clerics. Possibly at will and as many times as he/she wants. I'd have to check.

EDIT: Ok, they need a level of a divine casting class, and they burn spell slots like a cleric spontaneously converting their spells to Cure/Inflict spells.

So if Thor had no divine casting class in him, he couldn't cast all the spells he could grant.
If Deities and Demigods reflects OOTS Thor, something which is not entirely true, then he can not.

The MunchKING

2019-07-11, 08:43 PM

If Deities and Demigods reflects OOTS Thor, something which is not entirely true, then he can not.

*shrug* Do you know Thor's class levels? Maybe he's a 20th level Cleric/20th Level Favored Soul (Dad). :smalltongue: We can't really know unless Rich gives a break down.

woweedd

2019-07-11, 09:11 PM

*shrug* Do you know Thor's class levels? Maybe he's a 20th level Cleric/20th Level Favored Soul (Dad). :smalltongue: We can't really know unless Rich gives a break down.
Again, assuming we're using his Deities and Demigods stats, he's a Barbarian 20/Ranger 20.

The MunchKING

2019-07-11, 09:35 PM

Again, assuming we're using his Deities and Demigods stats, he's a Barbarian 20/Ranger 20.

Oh... I should have looked that up. Fair play.

Worldsong

2019-07-12, 01:27 AM

Both Thor and Loki carried a lot of documentation about each soul, so I bet they have done the research anyway.

Maybe they only researched the moment of death since the Bet makes everything else irrelevant. Or maybe individual gods are not qualified to make those calls and the review system is something done by experts.

That said I do have to point out that we've reached the point in the discussion where both sides are more addressing semantics and details rather than the actual point. That's usually a sign that we're not going to get anywhere.

So to summarize things, we have one camp saying that a Good god would try to pull all dwarven souls away from Hell so they can all be sent to the correct afterlife even if it's an Evil afterlife, and we've got a camp saying that a Good god would want to save the Good and Neutral dwarves but wouldn't find the Evil dwarven souls important since either way they'll be stuck in an Evil afterlife. Given that there's many different ways to be a Good person I say both camps are valid perspectives and it's a matter of what you personally prefer.

EDIT: as for which perspective is more valid from a Chaotic point of view, that's kind of muddied by the fact that there's many different reasons why Thor could prefer one over the other. In a vacuum, with no other motives present, I'd agree that not caring which Evil afterlife and Evil soul is stuck in is more Chaotic than finding it important everyone gets put through the organized judgement system. Of course for it to qualify as a Chaotic Good perspective you'd have to be absolutely sure that it's an Evil soul you're leaving to its fate and we don't know for sure whether Thor knows so beyond that point we're left to speculate unless Rich enlightens us on whether Thor knows for a fact which alignment each soul has.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 01:28 AM

Can't a God without cleric class levels still cast the spells he can grant at a caster level equal to his divine rank?

hamishspence

2019-07-12, 01:34 AM

Can't a God without cleric class levels still cast the spells he can grant at a caster level equal to his divine rank?

No - you must have levels in the appropriate divine spellcasting class.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spontaneousCasting

Spontaneous Casting
A deity of rank 1 or higher who has levels in a divine spellcasting class can spontaneously cast any spell it can grant.

So, to cast the cleric spells that you can grant, you must actually have cleric levels.

Worldsong

2019-07-12, 01:36 AM

No - you must have levels in the appropriate divine spellcasting class.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spontaneousCasting

Spontaneous Casting
A deity of rank 1 or higher who has levels in a divine spellcasting class can spontaneously cast any spell it can grant.

So, to cast the cleric spells that you can grant, you must actually have cleric levels.

Makes sense. This comic depicts Fenrir as a god and I don't expect that wolf to start throwing out cleric spells.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 01:37 AM

So to summarize things, we have one camp saying that a Good god would try to pull all dwarven souls away from Hell so they can all be sent to the correct afterlife even if it's an Evil afterlife, and we've got a camp saying that a Good god would want to save the Good and Neutral dwarves but wouldn't find the Evil dwarven souls important since either way they'll be stuck in an Evil afterlife. Given that there's many different ways to be a Good person I say both camps are valid perspectives and it's a matter of what you personally prefer.

What we were supposed to be doing was debating Thor's kind of G alignment. And what I was trying to do is explain why a NG is different from a CG. Because several people have already told they can't tell the difference. And by the way people understand the alignment system, there isn't any.

Worse still, it looks like in the end there is no difference between a LG and the other two either. In a pinch,, you can rationalize anything as reflective of either of the three.

No - you must have levels in the appropriate divine spellcasting class.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spontaneousCasting

Spontaneous Casting
A deity of rank 1 or higher who has levels in a divine spellcasting class can spontaneously cast any spell it can grant.

So, to cast the cleric spells that you can grant, you must actually have cleric levels.

Isn't Ranger a divine spellcasting class?

hamishspence

2019-07-12, 01:39 AM

This comic depicts Fenrir as a god and I don't expect that wolf to start throwing out cleric spells.

Note that he will be able to throw out spells from the appropriate domains (like Destruction?) but they will be spell-like abilities for him:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spellLikeAbilities

Spell-Like Abilities
A deity can use any domain spell it can grant as a spell-like ability at will. The deity’s effective caster level for such abilities is 10 + the deity’s divine rank. The saving throw DC for such abilities is 10 + the spell level + the deity’s Charisma bonus (if any) + the deity’s divine rank.

Worldsong

2019-07-12, 01:43 AM

What we were supposed to be doing was debating Thor's kind of G alignment. And what I was trying to do is explain why a NG is different from a CG. Because several people have already told they can't tell the difference. And by the way people understand the alignment system, there isn't any.

Worse still, it looks like in the end there is no difference between a LG and the other two either. In a pinch,, you can rationalize anything as reflective of either of the three.

I understand that you were originally aiming for 'this is why Thor is Chaotic', but the other side of the argument came from someone who was arguing that a Good god should save all the souls which kind of shifted the topic of the discussion.

And yes, that's generally the issue with the alignment system. Even with Good and Evil there can be grey areas and with Lawful and Chaotic it quickly turns into a real mess.

EDIT: Although on second thought that's not necessarily the problem with the alignment system as much as it is a problem with morality as a whole. I mean, we've got people who think intention is all that matters, people who think that action is all that matters, and every possible gradient in between. That alone already makes it impossible to make sense of things.

Note that he will be able to throw out spells from the appropriate domains (like Destruction?) but they will be spell-like abilities for him:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spellLikeAbilities

Spell-Like Abilities
A deity can use any domain spell it can grant as a spell-like ability at will. The deity’s effective caster level for such abilities is 10 + the deity’s divine rank. The saving throw DC for such abilities is 10 + the spell level + the deity’s Charisma bonus (if any) + the deity’s divine rank.

True enough, but it makes sense for him to throw out... honestly I don't know which domains he has. I'd imagine Destruction being one of them.

woweedd

2019-07-12, 03:00 AM

What we were supposed to be doing was debating Thor's kind of G alignment. And what I was trying to do is explain why a NG is different from a CG. Because several people have already told they can't tell the difference. And by the way people understand the alignment system, there isn't any.

Worse still, it looks like in the end there is no difference between a LG and the other two either. In a pinch,, you can rationalize anything as reflective of either of the three.

Isn't Ranger a divine spellcasting class?
A Chaotic Good person serves Chaos AND Good, a Neutral Good person serves Good, that's it, end of sentence. If Lawful means work best, a Neutral Good person will use them, and vice-versa, whereas a Chaotic person will oppose Law AS WELL AS Evil. Given the choice, CG errs towards Chaos, and LG errs towards Lawful: NG errs towards "whatever works". The thing i'm disputing is the idea that ANY person who calls themselves Good would be willing to put up with the injustice that is the current system under which the Dwarves live. A system whereby a great saint can be condemned to Hel because he had the gall to choke on a chicken bone. Or, even if you care about martial honor, this is a system where a great warrior can be condemned merely because he died while not in the battle. Alexander the Great, a warrior if ever there was one, died of a fever, to use a real-world example. He would not count as honorable. Being Lawful doesn't mean supporting all organized systems, and, in the situation Thor is in, he does not have the luxury of sorting Good from bad himself, nor does he need to. All those souls will be judged, but they all deserve the CHANCE to be judged. Any Good being would agree to that, I would think. THor has two choices: Free the souls, or don't. Anyone who calls themselves Good should take the first. Even if it's futile for some of them, the moral calculus does not work out well. Given the choice between "all the souls are free from Hel, some of whom it is pointless for" and "none of them are freed"...Which one should a Good person take?

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 04:08 AM

woweedd

2019-07-12, 04:21 AM

Isn't Ranger a divine spellcasting class?
Yes, but as said, I think it's pretty clear that, worldbuilding-wise, the interview cannot, in fact, be replicated by a single spell.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 06:56 AM

A Chaotic Good person serves Chaos AND Good, a Neutral Good person serves Good, that's it, end of sentence

Exactly. A NG serves Good. Not Evil, Chaos or Law. That's my point. A LG can be motivated to work towards Lawful ends even if no Good is involved. A CG can be motivated to work towards Chaotic ends even if no Good is involved. A NG won't bother unless Good is involved.

Yes, but as said, I think it's pretty clear that, worldbuilding-wise, the interview cannot, in fact, be replicated by a single spell.

As seen in the comic, and coherent with standard D&D cosmology, souls automatically pop on the plane they belong to, with no interview.

Only Celestia is shown to run an interview to check if the Soul is allowed to stay. Minrah was allowed into Valhalla without having to pass any intervew. Evil planes are glad to accept and torture any petitioner falling before their doors.

Therefore, "the interview" as a requeriment for a soul to reach it's final resting place doesn't exists, definitely not for evil souls. It's only a formalism for addmitance in Celestia.

Schroeswald

2019-07-12, 06:56 AM

Thor is chaotic, he shows no respect for the rules unless he has to, one of his first appearances showed him breaking the rules of how a spell works because it would be fun (and probably Good as well), and then he backs off of granting Durban's prayers (outside of cleric stuff) when the Twelve Gods get mad at him for doing it in the South (and all rules he follows have one goal, finding a way to preserve the world, and that helps insure another snarl doesn't appear to destroy everything). And then there's everything else that's been mentioned before, I just said an example I don't think we've seen before.

Also some of the Thor is Neutral Good stuff makes Chaotic Good sound crazy. To me Chaos is a lack of respect for rules, law is the respect of rules and neutral is the respect of some rules?respect of rules but trouble following them. Thor is chaotic because he doesn't respect rules, he follows what he thinks is right. Roy and Durkon are lawful because they respect rules, though Roy has some trouble following them which sometimes leans him into Neutral. Tarquin is Lawful Evil because he respects the rules of how the continent works, Belkar is Chaotic Evil because he respects no rules and no authority other than what he wants.

Emanick

2019-07-12, 06:59 AM

As seen in the comic, and coherent with standard D&D cosmology, souls automatically pop on the plane they belong to, with no interview.

Only Celestia is shown to run an interview to check if the Soul is allowed to stay. Minrah was allowes into Valhalla without having to pass any intervew. Evil planes are glad to accept and torture any petitioner who ends there.

Therefore, "the interview" as a requeriment for a soul to reach it's final resting place doesn't exists, definitely not for evil souls. It's only a formalism for addmitance in Celestia.

Clerics automatically go to the home plane of their deity, so that's probably why Durkon and Minrah didn't have to interview.

Fyraltari

2019-07-12, 07:03 AM

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 07:10 AM

Durkon and Minrah popped on the Cloud Plane just like Roy. Minrah was pre-cleared to go to Valhalla (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1136.html), she would still have had to go through he admission process.

No further admission process is mentioned or hinted to in comic, and there is no basis to assume that, in case of it existing, it would be the same than Celestia.

And, as for Evil souls, they are shown in comic to just fall in a tray and that's about it. No evil domain checks if you are too righteous to deserve allowance into eternal torture.

hamishspence

2019-07-12, 07:11 AM

Isn't Ranger a divine spellcasting class?

Yes - but only ranger spells can be cast, spontaneously or otherwise, from Ranger spell slots.

A deity with 20 levels of ranger (and only ranger) is not going to be able to cast cleric spells from those slots.

woweedd

2019-07-12, 07:13 AM

Exactly. A NG serves Good. Not Evil, Chaos or Law. That's my point. A LG can be motivated to work towards Lawful ends even if no Good is involved. A CG can be motivated to work towards Chaotic ends even if no Good is involved. A NG won't bother unless Good is involved.

As seen in the comic, and coherent with standard D&D cosmology, souls automatically pop on the plane they belong to, with no interview.

Only Celestia is shown to run an interview to check if the Soul is allowed to stay. Minrah was allowed into Valhalla without having to pass any intervew. Evil planes are glad to accept and torture any petitioner falling before their doors.

Therefore, "the interview" as a requeriment for a soul to reach it's final resting place doesn't exists, definitely not for evil souls. It's only a formalism for addmitance in Celestia.
You have no info to back up that assumption. I assume you go to the plane that matches your professed alignment, whereupon you are reviewed to see if you fit. And before you ask, in D&D rules, it's stated that Clerics always go to their God's realm upon death, regardless of their own alignment, so both Durkon and Minrah would go to Valhalla, as Clerics of Thor, regardless of their own leanings. Plus, I think we can reasonably assume the stringency varies, but the point i'm making is, Thor has no quick-n-easy way to determine which souls do and do not deserve eternal torment. He can either release all or none of them. Any Good creature would make the same choice.

Fyraltari

2019-07-12, 07:17 AM

No further admission process is mentioned or hinted to in comic, and there is no basis to assume that, in case of it existing, it would be the same than Celestia.
Do you not understand what "pre-cleared" means?

And, as for Evil souls, they are shown in comic to just fall in a tray and that's about it. No evil domain checks if you are too righteous to deserve allowance into eternal torture.
That's Lee's inbox. He's going to have to check on each of these, that's the work he's been putting behind. What do you think it's there for?

Worldsong

2019-07-12, 07:36 AM

A Chaotic Good person serves Chaos AND Good, a Neutral Good person serves Good, that's it, end of sentence. If Lawful means work best, a Neutral Good person will use them, and vice-versa, whereas a Chaotic person will oppose Law AS WELL AS Evil. Given the choice, CG errs towards Chaos, and LG errs towards Lawful: NG errs towards "whatever works". The thing i'm disputing is the idea that ANY person who calls themselves Good would be willing to put up with the injustice that is the current system under which the Dwarves live. A system whereby a great saint can be condemned to Hel because he had the gall to choke on a chicken bone. Or, even if you care about martial honor, this is a system where a great warrior can be condemned merely because he died while not in the battle. Alexander the Great, a warrior if ever there was one, died of a fever, to use a real-world example. He would not count as honorable. Being Lawful doesn't mean supporting all organized systems, and, in the situation Thor is in, he does not have the luxury of sorting Good from bad himself, nor does he need to. All those souls will be judged, but they all deserve the CHANCE to be judged. Any Good being would agree to that, I would think. THor has two choices: Free the souls, or don't. Anyone who calls themselves Good should take the first. Even if it's futile for some of them, the moral calculus does not work out well. Given the choice between "all the souls are free from Hel, some of whom it is pointless for" and "none of them are freed"...Which one should a Good person take?

If I'm understanding The Pilgrim's reasoning correctly the line of reasoning is more like this "IF you are freeing dwarven souls per individual rather than the batch and IF you know for a fact that a certain dwarven soul is going to end up in an Evil afterlife (because during the entirety of their life they were so blatantly evil that there's just no hope for them) then a Chaotic Good god could decide to not bother with freeing that soul because one Evil afterlife doesn't differ that much from another and being Chaotic you don't necessarily care much if the Evil afterlife they reside in is the most suitable one."

Of course there could be Chaotic and/or Good gods who'd want to oppose the Bet for the sake of opposing the Bet (either because it's blatantly unfair or because it's the kind of stupid system Chaotic folk like to rebel against) and free all dwarven souls if possible but one's alignment is not always defined by opposing the opposite alignment. A Good person can just want to do good things without vehemently opposing evil things (see the example of a Good person who helps anyone regardless of alignment. If they opposed Evil they'd leave Evil people to rot because they deserve their fate).

In that sense I would agree with Pilgrim that a Chaotic Good god could decide "This dwarf is with absolute certainty going to be sorted into an Evil afterlife, I don't see much point in pulling them out of this Evil afterlife since it's all the same in the end." This in contrast to a Lawful Good god who might feel like everything needs to be done orderly and tidily, so every soul needs to be pulled out of the Bet to be sorted and assigned to the correct afterlife. This is because one way to distinguish between Lawful and Good is that Lawful people believe in the proper order of things and everything being in the right place while Chaotic people don't really care much for how it happens as long as the desired end result is achieved.

Now, IF you are dealing with a scenario where you either free all the dwarven souls or no dwarven souls then yes a Chaotic Good god would free them all, because statistically speaking there's more Good and Neutral dwarves than there's Evil dwarves and even if the majority of those trapped souls were Evil that still wouldn't justify keeping the Good and Neutral souls trapped.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 08:12 AM

Yes - but only ranger spells can be cast, spontaneously or otherwise, from Ranger spell slots.

A deity with 20 levels of ranger (and only ranger) is not going to be able to cast cleric spells from those slots.

Why not? The requeriment is to have levels in a divine spellcasting class. Which Thor does. And Thor can grant the Detect Evil spell, as Durkon proves in comic.

If I'm understanding The Pilgrim's reasoning correctly...

Well, my line of reasoning was more on the line that, given the chance to rearrange the evil plane an evil soul will get tortured in:
- A LG will not move it, as it is currently were it belongs according to the Rules.
- A CG will move it, just for the shake of screwing with Order.
- A NG will do nothing, as a NG doesn't cares about Law or Chaos, and there is no Good involved.

Now there are people who thinks that the Sixth Amedment applies to all souls in the multiverse. But, as a certain Paladin put it, You didn't believe that Lawful Good automatically meant Freedom of Speech.

I do not miss the old times were the Alignment System was Good, Evil, Law and Chaos being objective cosmic forces and promoting one of them meant basically killing those of the opposite. But at least back then people could tell the difference between their own concept of what is Good and the behaviour of Good as a cosmic force.

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 08:35 AM

(double post)

hamishspence

2019-07-12, 08:43 AM

But, as a certain Paladin put it, You didn't believe that Lawful Good autoatically meant Freedom of Speech. .

Since when was Mr Jones a paladin?

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0272.html

Well, my line of reasoning was more on the line that, given the chance to rearrange the evil plane an evil soul will get tortured in:
- A LG will not move it, as it is currently were it belongs according to the Rules.

The only "rules" in play here are a bet between Hel & Thor & Loki. The bet doesn't exactly qualify as "The Rules of Cosmic Order".

Peelee

2019-07-12, 09:01 AM

Why not? The requeriment is to have levels in a divine spellcasting class. Which Thor does. And Thor can grant the Detect Evil spell, as Durkon proves in comic.

In the appropriate divine spellcasting class. Hamish summarizes it nicely:
No - you must have levels in the appropriate divine spellcasting class.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spontaneousCasting

Spontaneous Casting
A deity of rank 1 or higher who has levels in a divine spellcasting class can spontaneously cast any spell it can grant.

So, to cast the cleric spells that you can grant, you must actually have cleric levels.

If Thor does not have cleric levels, he can't cast cleric spells. Unless he can because Stickworld. :smallwink:

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 09:11 AM

Mmmh... you mean the "it" in "it can grant" meants the Class, not the Deity? I assumed it meant the Deity, as the description of Spontaneous Casting came right after the description of the Grant Spells ability.

Peelee

2019-07-12, 09:13 AM

Mmmh... you mean the the "it" in "it can grant" meants the Class, not the Deity? I assumed it meant the Deity, as it came after the Grant Spells ability of deities.

Yeah, when referring to people D&D books tend to use "he" or "she," not "it." Totally understand the confusion on that.

Morty

2019-07-12, 09:15 AM

Neutral is often difficult to pin down since the only way to reliably define Neutral in either axis would be to say that Good, Evil, Lawful and Chaotic are all reserved for extremists. In which case Neutral would immediately hold the majority of people.

And of course there's the issue that the alignment system just isn't perfect and you can't easily put anyone inside a block of defined characteristics.

I think this much has been aptly demonstrated, yes.

Worldsong

2019-07-12, 09:17 AM

- A CG will move it, just for the shake of screwing with Order.

I do not miss the old times were the Alignment System was Good, Evil, Law and Chaos being objective cosmic forces and promoting one of them meant basically killing those of the opposite. But at least back then people could tell the difference between their own concept of what is Good and the behaviour of Good as a cosmic force.

I myself don't really support the idea of 'Chaotic means automatically wrecking Order where you can find it.' It comes across as hollow, like you have no substance beyond opposing another concept.

Schroeswald

2019-07-12, 09:34 AM

I myself don't really support the idea of 'Chaotic means automatically wrecking Order where you can find it.' It comes across as hollow, like you have no substance beyond opposing another concept.

We’ve seen a lot of Elan and Haley (both Chaotic Good) and they don’t act like that so I can’t see that as correct in the OOTSverse

The Pilgrim

2019-07-12, 10:20 AM

I myself don't really support the idea of 'Chaotic means automatically wrecking Order where you can find it.' It comes across as hollow, like you have no substance beyond opposing another concept.

You can call it "promoting Chaos" instead of "opposing Law". Or just "chaotic people like things changing, lawful people like things remaining in their place".

Worldsong

2019-07-12, 10:27 AM

You can call it "promoting Chaos" instead of "opposing Law". Or just "chaotic people like things changing, lawful people like things remaining in their place".

I don't follow the belief that changing the name means much if the way you're describing it remains exactly the same. You're still defining the thing you're promoting as 'that thing, but then the opposite'.

Also that's not how Chaotic and Lawful work. It's not a game between 'I want change' and 'I want static'.

Schroeswald

2019-07-12, 11:33 AM

You can call it "promoting Chaos" instead of "opposing Law". Or just "chaotic people like things changing, lawful people like things remaining in their place".

Not really at all different, and once again this isn't really reflected by our two Chaotic Good heroes, they don't seem to like change any more than Roy (who is fine with change).

D.One

2019-07-12, 12:13 PM

Thor is good, but he's both Lawful and Chaotic, like a Schrodinger's Thor. Depending on te observer, he's lawful or chaotic.

And no, that's not Neutral. That's non-deterministic alignment :smallbiggrin:

Peelee

2019-07-12, 12:55 PM

Thor is good, but he's both Lawful and Chaotic, like a Schrodinger's Thor. Depending on te observer, he's lawful or chaotic.

I really think we're missing out on an untapped source of clean, renewable energy by not harnessing a generator to Schrödinger's eternally spinning grave.:smalltongue:

Schroeswald

2019-07-12, 03:26 PM

I really think we're missing out on an untapped source of clean, renewable energy by not harnessing a generator to Schrödinger's eternally spinning grave.:smalltongue:

And then Hel won't be so crazy because she can be powered by something besides souls!

KorvinStarmast

2019-07-12, 03:43 PM

I'm really not sure if every course of action needs to have an alignment applied to it. They don't, but for some reason D&D 3.5e centric philosophy demands it.

That's the point of the Deal - that it circumvents the "sorting process" - sending "those who died dishonorably" to Hel, regardless of where they would have gone if their lives as a whole had been judged. Ding. We have a winner. With that in mind, it would be fair to characterize Hel, Loki, and Thor as all having contributed to choas by being parties to that bet. It disrupts the previously estalished order.

And yes, that's generally the issue with the alignment system. Even with Good and Evil there can be grey areas and with Lawful and Chaotic it quickly turns into a real mess.
A reasonable person would think so. This is an internet forum discussion.

Thor is good, but he's both Lawful and Chaotic, like a Schrodinger's Thor. Depending on te observer, he's lawful or chaotic. And no, that's not Neutral. That's non-deterministic alignment :smallbiggrin: I like this take. I'd buy you a beer if I could.

Dion

2019-07-12, 04:46 PM

woweedd

2019-07-12, 07:03 PM

I believe wager itself is lawful, since treating everyone exactly the same at death (regardless of how they lived their life) is pretty much textbook law and order.

The fact that Hel supports the wager makes me think Hel is lawful.

The fact that Thor opposes the wager makes me think Thor is chaotic.

The fact that Loki made the wager makes me think Loki is very, very tricky.
I'd define it as Lawful EVIL, though, since it seems blatantly unfair. This would gel nicely with my perception of those three as, in order, Netural Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Evil, respectively. Loki made the bet, partly to serve Evil, partly because he wanted to teach Hel a lesson and doesn't mind sacrificing lives to do it. Hel supports the wager because it gives her power, and Netural Evil pepole will pretty much support whatever puts them on top, and Thor opposes it on both counts.

deuterio12

2019-07-13, 01:01 AM

I'd define it as Lawful EVIL, though, since it seems blatantly unfair. This would gel nicely with my perception of those three as, in order, Netural Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Evil, respectively. Loki made the bet, partly to serve Evil, partly because he wanted to teach Hel a lesson and doesn't mind sacrificing lives to do it.

Sacrificed lives? What sacrificed lives? The wager only matters after you die, and just decides which god gets to munch in your delicious soul.

That's all that it boils down to, gods squabling over who gets more tasty food.

And before you go "but we see the souls in the afterlife", notice we don't see any souls from the previous worlds, or not much in older souls either (just Roy's grandfather at best, not that far ago). The afterlife isn't eternal, it's just a place to keep the souls fresh until the respective god feels like having a snack.

hamishspence

2019-07-13, 01:05 AM

It matters to the soul though, whether the process of "slowly powering the Outer Planes over time" is painful, or pleasant:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1144.html

The afterlife isn't eternal, it's just a place to keep the souls fresh until the respective god feels like having a snack.
Evil gods, and archfiends, might "snack on souls like popcorn" (Complete Divine). Good and Neutral ones, not.

The Giant's posts on the subject:

I am saying that is specifically what the afterlife does. It makes you into a cookie-cutter clone of everyone of the same alignment. It may take centuries to do so, but all the people at the top of the mountain? Completely indistinguishable from one another. Arguably, that is the purpose of the D&D afterlife—to turn flawed mortal souls into perfect alignment-batteries, through various methodologies. In the Nine Hells, they torture you until you forget everything else. In Celestia, you meditate until you renounce all worldly concerns. In Valhalla, you party until you can't remember your own name. In Limbo, the chaos drives you mad. In Mechanus, you sit in grey cubicle stamping paperwork until you are bored into oblivion. And so on and so forth.

Souls go to the afterlife and eventually dissolve into the substance of the Outer Plane to which they are remanded, end of story. You don't have to like it or think it's fair, but it's how it works—because like my story, D&D needs the afterlife to not be Awesome Happy Fun Times Forever or else there's no logical underpinning for why the heroes should want to save the world from destruction.

Aquillion

2019-07-13, 01:25 AM

It feels like some of these questions about "are the gods' fundamental structures for handling mortal souls good or evil" (as it relates to the dwarf soul agreement) are getting into theodicy-style arguments that have no real satisfactory answers in an adventure-world, outside of maybe "there are evil gods and the overall considerations resulting that force good gods to accept what they can get, which are often imperfect agreements like this one."

The reality is that the world has to have underlying problems or there's no story. Which, in turn, means that by definition any agreement Thor could reach with Hel has to have serious problems for the dwarves affected by it.

woweedd

2019-07-13, 03:31 AM

Sacrificed lives? What sacrificed lives? The wager only matters after you die, and just decides which god gets to munch in your delicious soul.

That's all that it boils down to, gods squabling over who gets more tasty food.

And before you go "but we see the souls in the afterlife", notice we don't see any souls from the previous worlds, or not much in older souls either (just Roy's grandfather at best, not that far ago). The afterlife isn't eternal, it's just a place to keep the souls fresh until the respective god feels like having a snack.
Matters to the souls. doesn't it? And Thor, and, hell, even Loki, do seem to care about mortals as more then a food source, whether or not they'll eat them in the end.

KorvinStarmast

2019-07-14, 05:06 PM

Quoting the giant:

In Valhalla, you party until you can't remember your own name. When I was in my mid 20's, that's a description of heaven, or a really vigorous weekend in Vegas.

Now, not so much.

deuterio12

2019-07-15, 12:06 AM

Matters to the souls. doesn't it? And Thor, and, hell, even Loki, do seem to care about mortals as more then a food source, whether or not they'll eat them in the end.

Dunno about that, Thor's definition of fun is randomly rain storms upon his food (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0201.html), and a whole village worth of food being devoured by Surtur is lower in his priorities than taking a phone call. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0040.html) Not sure about you, but if I need to decide between letting a meal burn and got to waste or picking up a random call, I'll always try to save the meal, and I certainly don't use perfectly fine food for blind target practice either. That's how little Thor cares about most mortals unless he can use them to get a direct edge over another god like it's happening now.

And Loki, as pointed out by plenty of other people, was the one coming up with the bet about who got more tasty food.

Thor and Loki only showing care about delicious souls when it's a quite personal matter for them, aka if they let Hel get away with her plan, Hel will become their new boss, and that doesn't look like it would be nice to Thor and Loki personally, besides now senile Odin is technically the boss of the pantheon but is, well, too senile to really boss anybody around thus letting Thor and Loki play as they please.

So yeah, I'll believe Thor cares about souls beyond being food when I see him move a finger to help said souls whitout the hungry god having anything personal to profit from it.

woweedd

2019-07-15, 03:58 AM

Dunno about that, Thor's definition of fun is randomly rain storms upon his food (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0201.html), and a whole village worth of food being devoured by Surtur is lower in his priorities than taking a phone call. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0040.html) Not sure about you, but if I need to decide between letting a meal burn and got to waste or picking up a random call, I'll always try to save the meal, and I certainly don't use perfectly fine food for blind target practice either. That's how little Thor cares about most mortals unless he can use them to get a direct edge over another god like it's happening now.

And Loki, as pointed out by plenty of other people, was the one coming up with the bet about who got more tasty food.

Thor and Loki only showing care about delicious souls when it's a quite personal matter for them, aka if they let Hel get away with her plan, Hel will become their new boss, and that doesn't look like it would be nice to Thor and Loki personally, besides now senile Odin is technically the boss of the pantheon but is, well, too senile to really boss anybody around thus letting Thor and Loki play as they please.

So yeah, I'll believe Thor cares about souls beyond being food when I see him move a finger to help said souls whitout the hungry god having anything personal to profit from it.

Stroms serve a purpose, naturally-speaking. It's his job. And, as for the Surtur thing...I'll plead the "one of the earliest strips, and like many of same, doesn't really factor into my understanding of my character, given that it is inconsistent with his other actions". Plus, it's fairly obviously a D&D rules joke*, from the days when that was the comic's only purpose, so...Yeah, I kinda discount. Plus, Thor's language towards Durkon and Minrah does make it sound like he cares about them as something other then food sources, or his reminiscing about his sorrow at how many followers he's lost. That doesn't sound like someone who lost a meal: It sounds like he gives some amount of a ****. And it should be noted: I don't think Loki cares about mortals as in compassion: He cares about them as cat videos: He watches them for lols, and doesn't want them to die simply because he'd have nothing else to do. He's still evil, so his definition of "humor" is one we'd find horrifying, but he cares about us as "eh, they're amusing: I won't kill them long as they don't get in my way".
*Namely, "Hm, Clerics have to telepathically ask their God for spells every time they prepare: I bet that doesn't always happen at convenient times for the God".

Worldsong

2019-07-15, 07:39 AM

Dunno about that, Thor's definition of fun is randomly rain storms upon his food (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0201.html), and a whole village worth of food being devoured by Surtur is lower in his priorities than taking a phone call. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0040.html) Not sure about you, but if I need to decide between letting a meal burn and got to waste or picking up a random call, I'll always try to save the meal, and I certainly don't use perfectly fine food for blind target practice either. That's how little Thor cares about most mortals unless he can use them to get a direct edge over another god like it's happening now.

And Loki, as pointed out by plenty of other people, was the one coming up with the bet about who got more tasty food.

Thor and Loki only showing care about delicious souls when it's a quite personal matter for them, aka if they let Hel get away with her plan, Hel will become their new boss, and that doesn't look like it would be nice to Thor and Loki personally, besides now senile Odin is technically the boss of the pantheon but is, well, too senile to really boss anybody around thus letting Thor and Loki play as they please.

So yeah, I'll believe Thor cares about souls beyond being food when I see him move a finger to help said souls whitout the hungry god having anything personal to profit from it.

That's a good way to make sure you never have to reconsider your stance, because you can interpret almost anything Thor does that is beneficial for the mortals as being beneficial for himself and other gods, either in the short or the long run.

The only thing which you couldn't explain away was if he sacrificed himself permanently for the mortals, and "I'll believe your good intentions when you die for me" is an absurd standard to set for someone to prove themselves to be good people.

Also as has been pointed out the example of Surtr was one of the earliest strips and it's been stated SO MANY TIMES that Rich didn't have a long-term plan in the first 100 strips or so and that what happens in those strips shouldn't be used as argument for anything regarding the canon of the world.

And the example with Surtr was #40 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0040.html), so most definitely an example of an early installment joke which doesn't represent the actual canon.

I'm starting to think I should add a statement to my signature. Something like "If your argument is based off of the start of the comic you're relying on Early Installment Weirdness (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarlyInstallmentWeirdness) to prove you're right. Don't do that."

KorvinStarmast

2019-07-15, 08:23 AM

I'm starting to think I should add a statement to my signature. Something like "If your argument is based off of the start of the comic you're relying on Early Installment Weirdness (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarlyInstallmentWeirdness) to prove you're right. Don't do that." While I agree with you, that won't stop the haters from hating.

deuterio12

2019-07-15, 07:14 PM

That's a good way to make sure you never have to reconsider your stance, because you can interpret almost anything Thor does that is beneficial for the mortals as being beneficial for himself and other gods, either in the short or the long run.

The only thing which you couldn't explain away was if he sacrificed himself permanently for the mortals, and "I'll believe your good intentions when you die for me" is an absurd standard to set for someone to prove themselves to be good people.

It's your absurd standard, not mine.

All I'm asking is a scenario where Thor helps mortals and doesn't gain anything himself. Thor doesn't even need to sacrifice anything besides a few moments of his time.

Also as has been pointed out the example of Surtr was one of the earliest strips and it's been stated SO MANY TIMES that Rich didn't have a long-term plan in the first 100 strips or so and that what happens in those strips shouldn't be used as argument for anything regarding the canon of the world.

And the example with Surtr was #40 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0040.html), so most definitely an example of an early installment joke which doesn't represent the actual canon.

Now that's just another of your absurd standards, because with that you can invalidate any and all arguments because they were stuff that happened earlier. "Oh, Thor accepting bets about the fate of millions of mortal snacks while drunk was all the way back in strip 1083, that was just an early installment joke and clearly not cannon. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1083.html)"

Thor ruining countless mortal lives on whims has always been a key point of the comic.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-15, 07:16 PM

The only thing which you couldn't explain away was if he sacrificed himself permanently for the mortals, and "I'll believe your good intentions when you die for me" is an absurd standard to set for someone to prove themselves to be good people.
We demand it of fictional characters all the time. Redemption Equals Death for a reason.

Schroeswald

2019-07-15, 07:22 PM

We demand it of fictional characters all the time. Redemption Equals Death for a reason.

No. That should not be a rule in any work of fiction, redemption equaling death is fine, but expecting someone who does not do completely good things to die for others to be good is ridiculous, dumb, and undermines both the idea of redemption and a happy ending.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-15, 07:25 PM

No. That should not be a rule in any work of fiction, redemption equaling death is fine, but expecting someone who does not do completely good things to die for others to be good is ridiculous, dumb, and undermines both the idea of redemption and a happy ending.
Good riddance.

woweedd

2019-07-15, 07:40 PM

Good riddance.
Are you against the idea of redemption or the idea of happy endings?

Schroeswald

2019-07-15, 07:45 PM

Good riddance.

Maybe it’s just me, but I like narratives with redemption and happy endings, I’m not saying they have to exist, but some of my favorite movies and shows have happy endings and/or redemptions, and several I like don’t (though due to probability not nearly as much).

Aquillion

2019-07-15, 09:10 PM

The most recent comic almost reads like a reply to this thread with regards to chaotic people following the rules when it suits them.

Worldsong

2019-07-16, 07:50 AM

It's your absurd standard, not mine.

All I'm asking is a scenario where Thor helps mortals and doesn't gain anything himself. Thor doesn't even need to sacrifice anything besides a few moments of his time.

No, it's most likely yours. You see, whenever people set up conditions like that what they usually want is a way to seem reasonable while sticking to their preconceived notions.

While it's entirely possible that you're more reasonable than that, and I will apologize if I turn out to have been wrong, it's too common a thing for it to just be dismissed out of hand.

It would help if you could provide an example of a scenario which would convince you that Thor really cares which is realistic, likely to happen within the comic, and won't include him permanently sacrificing himself.

The first two requirements are there so the answer won't be something that won't ever happen, the third because as established demanding that someone sacrifices to prove themselves good is ridiculous.

This is most likely a difficult task because, as stated, Thor benefits from nearly literally everything that benefits the mortals. And important life lesson: just because something benefits both yourself and someone else doesn't mean you can't also be doing it because of Good motivations. Selfishness does not automatically trump every other motivation.

Now that's just another of your absurd standards, because with that you can invalidate any and all arguments because they were stuff that happened earlier. "Oh, Thor accepting bets about the fate of millions of mortal snacks while drunk was all the way back in strip 1083, that was just an early installment joke and clearly not cannon. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1083.html)"

Thor ruining countless mortal lives on whims has always been a key point of the comic.

I didn't have one absurd standard and this isn't another, so my total is still zero.

And no, I can't invalidate every single part of the comic. I can just invalidate everything you pull from the first 100 because literally every person of any relevance is in agreement (including Rich himself), that the first 100 pages shouldn't be taken seriously. I specifically stated the first 100 so you can't even argue that I tried to invalidate every part of the comic I dislike. Seriously, can you at least make your accusations somewhat sensible? This just looks like throwing everything back at me without thinking it through.

Also, allow me to laugh for a little bit. Yes, Thor ruining people's lives has definitely been a core part of the comic. That certainly explains the fact that he doesn't appear all that often, and that every time he does appear outside of the first 100 comics he's either being helpful or his behaviour is more kinda stupid than nefarious.

And I see we've got another fellow who thinks that being tricked into a bad agreement while drunk makes you a bad person. I do love that line of reasoning because it's so silly. Mind-altering substances leading to bad decisions? Nuts to that, it's clearly showing your TRUE SELF. Unless you're one of those people who believes that motivations don't matter and only actions decide your alignment.

We demand it of fictional characters all the time. Redemption Equals Death for a reason.

Important life lesson. You might want to write this one down.

Just because something is done a lot doesn't make it a good idea.

Redemption Equals Death is a good trope for drama and to drive the point home in the skull of every reader/viewer, to ensure that only the must hardheaded could still argue that at the end that person was evil.

However it's extreme, it could be called rather unfair and it most definitely should not be treated as the minimum requirement for a formerly evil person to be acknowledged as good.

The most recent comic almost reads like a reply to this thread with regards to chaotic people following the rules when it suits them.

It is very satisfying to read.

Of course it's a tad depressing to deal with the belief that to be Chaotic you must self-destructively oppose rules at every opportunity. It makes it sound like for them Chaotic is for stupid and insane people.

Going to be even more depressing when someone argues that because Loki is willing to enforce the rules when it works in his favour he can't be Chaotic.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-16, 10:04 AM

Just because something is done a lot doesn't make it a good idea.
On the contrary. People aren't stupid, and usually take the actions that they judge to be in their own interests, in the context in which they find themselves. It follows that, in a given context, an action being popular is at least prima facie evidence that that action is incentivized by that context.

Whether that action conforms to an abstract morality divorced from context is another matter entirely, and the one I believe you're actually talking about. It's also not a terribly useful framing sice, even in those exceptional historical moments when context changes, it does not change according to the will of moral planners but through a working-out of its preexisting tensions and towards one of a few more or less predetermined ends.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-16, 10:11 AM

On the contrary. People aren't stupid, and usually take the actions that they judge to be in their own interests, in the context in which they find themselves.

Counterpoint: drinking. Drinking and driving. Smoking. And countless others.

People are frequently wrong in their judgement of what is against their own interest.

Grey Wolf

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-16, 10:23 AM

Counterpoint: drinking. Drinking and driving. Smoking. And countless others.

People are frequently wrong in their judgement of what is against their own interest.

Grey Wolf
None of these things is wholly bereft of benefits; smoking and drinking can feel good, and driving drunk can get you where you want to go quickly. Their bad consequences are not foregone conclusions either, but risks of various magnitudes.

It's also worth noting that since we're talking about popularity, we have to talk about risk evaluation over populations and not by individuals. Smoking became a lot less popular, for instance, once the outright lies surrounding the magnitude of the risks associated with it were exposed. And not just because of changing generational mores, though those certainly played a part. Existing smokers did quit in significant numbers, and there was a spate of class action lawsuits.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-16, 10:29 AM

None of these things is wholly bereft of benefits; smoking and drinking can feel good, and driving drunk can get you where you want to go quickly. Their bad consequences are not foregone conclusions either, but risks of various magnitudes.

Nothing is wholly bereft of benefit. It still doesn't make it a good idea. Your assertion "People aren't stupid, and usually take the actions that they judge to be in their own interests, in the context in which they find themselves" is still meeting the reality that just because an individual judges an action to be in their best interest, there are countless cases in which it is plainly obvious it is not in their best, or better, or even good interest, and even more cases in which it might not be obvious, but certainly can be identified as against their best interest both at the time and/or in foresight.

Grey Wolf

Worldsong

2019-07-16, 10:35 AM

On the contrary. People aren't stupid, and usually take the actions that they judge to be in their own interests, in the context in which they find themselves. It follows that, in a given context, an action being popular is at least prima facie evidence that that action is incentivized by that context.

Whether that action conforms to an abstract morality divorced from context is another matter entirely, and the one I believe you're actually talking about. It's also not a terribly useful framing sice, even in those exceptional historical moments when context changes, it does not change according to the will of moral planners but through a working-out of its preexisting tensions and towards one of a few more or less predetermined ends.

I was going to argue this, but I get the feeling Grey Wolf is doing a better job than I would. The only thing I can really say is that I agree with him that there's too many examples of things which are popular but which by and large can hardly be considered good. Especially if the main argument for them being good is short term benefits at great expense in the long run.

EDIT: also even if we agree with the idea that people on average aren't stupid (which in itself is worth a debate) group mentality is a horrible thing.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-16, 10:43 AM

EDIT: also even if we agree with the idea that people on average aren't stupid (which in itself is worth a debate) group mentality is a horrible thing.

I won't touch the assertion "people aren't stupid" with a ten-foot pole, but I do like Rowling's observation that it takes a truly intelligent individual to make the worst, most huge of mistakes. You don't have to be stupid to make stupid choices.

Grey Wolf

Worldsong

2019-07-16, 10:46 AM

I won't touch the assertion "people aren't stupid" with a ten-foot pole, but I do like Rowling's observation that it takes a truly intelligent individual to make the worst, most huge of mistakes. You don't have to be stupid to make stupid choices.

Grey Wolf

Oh, yeah, that too. Sometimes being smart just means you know how to make a disaster as big and catastrophic as possible.

woweedd

2019-07-16, 11:09 AM

I won't touch the assertion "people aren't stupid" with a ten-foot pole, but I do like Rowling's observation that it takes a truly intelligent individual to make the worst, most huge of mistakes. You don't have to be stupid to make stupid choices.

Grey Wolf
Exact quote: "Being, forgive me, rather wiser then most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly greater". Indeed, in my personal experience, sometimes, being smart doesn't mean you make good decisions: It just makes you better at justifying bad decisions...Including to yourself, sometimes. WISDOM is the stat for self-awareness, ya know.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-16, 11:38 AM

Really masterful shifting of the discussion's framing from the collective to the individualistic. Congratulations.

Worldsong

2019-07-16, 11:45 AM

Really masterful shifting of the discussion's framing from the collective to the individualistic. Congratulations.

My last comment on the group thing was that group mentality is a horrible thing. I feel like that represents my position on the collective rather well.

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-16, 11:48 AM

My last comment on the group thing was that group mentality is a horrible thing. I feel like that represents my position on the collective rather well.
That it is a useless if not outright harmful framing?

I can't agree. Humans are social animals and 1) need socialization for individual health and more importantly 2) develop their capacities as a species through relations and interdependence.

Worldsong

2019-07-16, 11:51 AM

That it is a useless if not outright harmful framing?

I can't agree. Humans are social animals and 1) need socialization for individual health and more importantly 2) develop their capacities as a species through relations and interdependence.

It's useful in stating how I feel about the concept. And frankly I think it's less harmful than group mentality itself.

Group mentality often causes very harmful mentalities. It creates echo chambers for hatred and bigotry. Yes it also has useful purposes and yes it's a necessity for humans but I would always advice people to prioritize individualistic thought so they aren't swept away by the flood of emotions and desire to be part of the pack that large groups bring with them.

woweedd

2019-07-16, 12:59 PM

It's useful in stating how I feel about the concept. And frankly I think it's less harmful than group mentality itself.

Group mentality often causes very harmful mentalities. It creates echo chambers for hatred and bigotry. Yes it also has useful purposes and yes it's a necessity for humans but I would always advice people to prioritize individualistic thought so they aren't swept away by the flood of emotions and desire to be part of the pack that large groups bring with them.
"In groups, all of humanity's traits are magnified. There you will find our greatest and our worst".
-Me, just now.

Grey_Wolf_c

2019-07-16, 01:02 PM

"In groups, all of humanity's traits are magnified. There you will find our greatest and our worst".
-Me, just now.

'Odd thing, ain’t it…you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.'

GW c

zimmerwald1915

2019-07-16, 02:16 PM

GW c
Maybe it's right and justified? Civility isn't good for its own sake.

terodil

2019-07-16, 04:39 PM

Maybe it's right and justified? Civility isn't good for its own sake.
When group dynamics are involved, 'what's right and justified' tends to take a backseat compared to 'it's them or us'. And unfortunately the latter only rarely has anything to do with the former.

Paleomancer

2019-07-17, 09:08 AM

The alignment has been discussed more than once in the comic.

Thor is Lawful Stupid.

Firstly, that is the overused stereotype for bureaucrats and others who abide by strict codes of law (as per TV Tropes, whose contributors appear to have largely defined the term as is). It tends to manifest in the form of the "oh so evil DMV" approach that manages to insult actual lawkeepers and readers for its mere existence. Thor is inclined to bend or dismiss rules outright as he can, which is at the very least borderline chaotic by the standards of the comic and D&D in general.

As for "stupid," aside from the fact that such a word gets overused to the point of losing all valid meaning, and which has one heck of an unfortunate history in terms of its relation to some severe historical bigotry that we cannot discuss here... Thor is a mixed bag. Early in the comic he was borderline apathetic; he gradually has been revised to be more caring of mortal life and capable of foresight and rational thought, at least as far as OotS deities go.

Overall: Chaotic Good is probably the closest alignment.

woweedd

2019-07-17, 09:25 AM

Firstly, that is the overused stereotype for bureaucrats and others who abide by strict codes of law (as per TV Tropes, whose contributors appear to have largely defined the term as is). It tends to manifest in the form of the "oh so evil DMV" approach that manages to insult actual lawkeepers and readers for its mere existence. Thor is inclined to bend or dismiss rules outright as he can, which is at the very least borderline chaotic by the standards of the comic and D&D in general.

As for "stupid," aside from the fact that such a word gets overused to the point of losing all valid meaning, and which has one heck of an unfortunate history in terms of its relation to some severe historical bigotry that we cannot discuss here... Thor is a mixed bag. Early in the comic he was borderline apathetic; he gradually has been revised to be more caring of mortal life and capable of foresight and rational thought, at least as far as OotS deities go.

Overall: Chaotic Good is probably the closest alignment.

The "Stupid" alignments are generally meant to mean "taking your alignment to an absurd extreme". Lawful Stupid is a beracurt who will arrest the guy on the way to kill Lord BadBad because he double-parked, Chaotic Stupid is someone who acts completely randomly, with no regard for...anything. Stupid Good is pacificist to the point of being suicidal, Stupid Evil is so devoted to hurting people that it's willing to hurt itself in the process, and Stupid Netural is so devoted to "balance", it'll change sides in the middle of a war to aid whoever's losing.